Chapter 4

Question 1

Age equivalent

Answer 1

A very general score that is used to compare the performance of children at the same age with one another.

Question 2

Chronological age

Answer 2

The age of the child at the time of testing.

Question 3

Data

Answer 3

Information gathered and collected during the assessment process.

Question 4

Deciles

Answer 4

Division of scores into tenths or ten equal units. For example, the sixth decile is the point at which 60 percent of the scores fall below, whereas the ninth decile is the point at which 90 percent of the scores fall below.

Question 5

Grade equivalent

Answer 5

A very general score that is used to compare the performance of children in the same grade with one another.

Question 6

Percentile rank (percentile)

Answer 6

A score indicating the percentage of people or scores that occur at or below a given score. If you have a percentile rank of 75, this means that you did as well as or better than 75 percent of the students in the class.

Question 7

Protocol

Answer 7

The booklet where responses and scores are recorded.

Question 8

Quartiles

Answer 8

Division of scores into four quarters: 1–25, 26–50, 51–75, and 76–99. The first quartile (1–25) marks the lower quarter (bottom 25%) or bottom fourth of all scores, whereas the fourth quartile represents the upper quarter (top 25%).

Question 9

Raw data

Answer 9

The raw score indicates the number of items correctly answered on a given test. In almost all cases, it is the first score a teacher obtains when interpreting data. Raw scores by themselves have little to no meaning. They need to be transformed into scores that have value (e.g., standard scores, percentiles, age equivalents, etc.).

Question 10

Scaled scores

Answer 10

A conversion of a student’s raw score on a test to a common scale that allows for a numerical comparison between students.

Question 11

Standard score

Answer 11

A score that has been transformed to fit a normal curve, with a mean and standard deviation that remain the same across ages.

Question 12

Stanine

Answer 12

An abbreviation for “standard nines,” it is a type of standard score that has a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 2. Stanine scores can range from 1 to 9.

Question 13

T scores

Answer 13

An indication of how many standard deviations an observation in a data is above or below the mean. It is another way to express test performance. T scores have a mean of 50 with a standard deviation of 10.

Question 14

Z scores

Answer 14

Indicates how many standard deviations a score is above or below the mean. A z score is a standard score distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.