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Understanding Test Scores Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

Educational Psychology from Santrock's Chapter 15 on standardized testing and teaching.

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

Descri­ptive Statistics

Frequency Distri­bution
A listing of scores, usually from highest to lowest, along with the number of times each score appears
Histogram
The frequency distri­bution in the form of a graph.
Central Tendency
A number that provides inform­ation about the average, or typical, score in a set of data.
Mean
The average of the scores (X or M)
Median
The score that falls exactly in the middle of a distri­bution of scores after they have been arranged (or ranked) from highest to lowest.
Mode
The score that occurs most often

Measures of Variab­ility

Range
The distance between the highest and lowest scores.
Standard Deviation
Is a measure of how much a set of scores varies around the mean of the scores.

Interp­reting Test Results

Raw Score
The number of items the student answered correctly on the test.
Percen­til­e-Rank Score
Reveals the percentage of the distri­bution that lies at or below the score.
Stanine Score
Describes a student’s test perfor­mance on a 9-point scale ranging from 1 to 9.
Grade-­Equ­ivalent Score
Indicates a student’s perfor­mance in relation to grade level & months of the school year, assuming a 10-month school year, to the norm group.
Standard Score (Standard Deviation)
Expressed as a deviation from the mean, which involves the concept of standard deviation.
Z-Score
Provides inform­ation about how many standard deviations a raw score is above or below the mean.
The small differ­ences in test scores, especially percentile rank and grade-­equ­ivalent test scores, should be interp­reted with caution.
  

Normal Distri­bution

When most of the scores cluster around the mean. A normal distri­bution also is called a normal curve, bell-s­haped curve, or bell curve. In normal distri­bution, bell shape shows that the most common scores are near the middle. The normal distri­bution incorp­orates inform­ation about both the mean and the standard deviation.