Standardized test

Originally a standardized test was simply a standard test – of academic achievement or of knowledge in a specific academic or vocational domain. It has since acquired the meaning of a test whose scores are interpreted by reference to the scores of a norm group which has taken the test and which is usually considered to be representative of the population which takes the test. For example, standardized tests of academic achievement provide conversion tables showing the percentile ranks in the norm group of all possible raw scores.