In psychological testing, what are norms?

• A. A reference group expressing typical scores for a specified population, used to interpret individual scores.
• B. The standard score derived from test statistics
• C. A measure of test reliability
• D. A scoring method for personality tests

Answer: (B)

Norms are a reference group that expresses typical scores for a specified population, used to interpret an individual’s score. They provide the benchmark that shows where a person stands relative to peers who share similar characteristics (like age or education), turning a raw score into meaningful context such as average, above average, or below average.

This differs from a standard score (which is a specific transformation used to compare scores across distributions), from a measure of reliability (which assesses consistency), and from a scoring method used for personality tests. Norms don’t themselves describe how consistently a test measures something or how the scoring works; they define the benchmark for interpretation.