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Cited by 68Psychometric Methodologies and TestingPsychological Testing and AssessmentEducational Assessment and Pedagogy

A Continuous Solution to the Norming Problem

Lenhard, Alexandra, Lenhard, Wolfgang, Suggate, Sebastian, Segerer, Robin·2018·Assessment
DOI 10.1177/1073191116656437
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Abstract

Conventional methods for producing test norms are often plagued with “jumps” or “gaps” (i.e., discontinuities) in norm tables and low confidence for assessing extreme scores. We propose a new approach for producing continuous test norms to address these problems that also has the added advantage of not requiring assumptions about the distribution of the raw data: Norm values are established from raw data by modeling the latter ones as a function of both percentile scores and an explanatory variable (e.g., age). The proposed method appears to minimize bias arising from sampling and measurement error, while handling marked deviations from normality—such as are commonplace in clinical samples. In addition to step-by-step instructions in how to apply this method, we demonstrate its advantages over conventional discrete norming procedures using norming data from two different psychometric tests, employing either age norms ( N = 3,555) or grade norms ( N = 1,400).

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  • The prevalence of some psychiatric disorders and traits differs from the general population because of the UK Biobank's "healthy volunteer" bias.

    “the prevalence of some psychiatric disorders and traits differs from the general population [36] because of the UK Biobank’s “healthy volunteer” bias [35].”

    From High intelligence is not associated with a greater propensity for mental health disorders (2023) · cites this paper as [36]

    The Problems of Data Collection section (p. 1) discusses the general difficulty of recruiting a representative standardization sample. Our copy does not address UK Biobank or compare the prevalence of psychiatric disorders and traits with the general population; searches for those terms and healthy-volunteer bias found no supporting passage. (LLM, conf=0.77)

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Research works printed but not linked: 6

  1. Anonymous Authors (in press).
  2. Blom, G. (1958). Statistical estimates and transformed betavariables . New York, NY: Wiley.
  3. Kristof, W. (1981). Anwendungen einer Beziehung zwischen t- und F-Verteilungen auf das Prüfen gewisser statistischer Hypothesen über Varianzen und Korrelationen [Application of a relation between t- and F-distributions on testing certain statistical hypotheses about variances and correlations]. In W. Jahnke (Ed.), Beiträge zur Methodik in der differentiellen, diagnostischen und klinischen Psychologie (pp. 46-57). Königstein/Taunus, Germany: Hain.
  4. Lenhard, A., Lenhard, W., Suggate, S., & Segerer, R. (2015). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4) . Frankfurt, Germany: Pearson Clinical Assessment.
  5. Lenhard, W., Lenhard, A., & Schneider, W. (in press). ELFE II: Ein Leseverständnistest für Erst- bis Siebtklässler [A reading comprehension test for Grades 1 to 7]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
  6. Zachary, R. A., & Gorsuch, R. L. (1985). Continuous norming: Implications for the WAIS-R. Journal of Clinical Psychology , 41 , 86-94. doi:10.1002/1097-4679(198501) 41:13.0.CO;2-W · DOI

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Authors
Lenhard, A., Lenhard, W., Suggate, S., & Segerer, R.
Affiliations
  • Psychometrica, Institute for Psychological Diagnostics, Dettelbach, Bavaria, Germany
  • University of Würzburg (DE)
  • University of Regensburg (DE)
  • University of Basel (CH)
Corresponding author
Lenhard, Wolfgang
ORCID
Venue
Assessment
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2016-07-02
Volume
25
Issue
1
Pages
112-125
ISSN
  • 1073-1911 (ISSN-L)
  • 1552-3489
DOI
10.1177/1073191116656437
OpenAlex
W2466518625
Cited by
68
References
25
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 7
FWCI
2.92
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Assessment (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • University of Regensburg Publication Server (University of Regensburg) (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • Hogrefe GmbH & Co KG, Göttingen, Germany
  • Pearson Assessment GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Psychological Testing and Assessment
  • Social Sciences › Education › Educational Assessment and Pedagogy
Keywords
test norming, percentile scores, age norms, sampling bias, measurement error, clinical samples
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Age Factors, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Humans, Male, Terminology as Topic, Psychometrics, Reference Values, Regression Analysis, Reproducibility of Results, Age Distribution, Statistics, Nonparametric, Young Adult

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