What Is… Normative versus Criterion-referenced Assessment

Abstract

Any reform of the current medical curriculum requires a reappraisal of the principles and practices of the evaluation system. The norm-referenced test which at this time is the primary method of evaluation was initially designed to rank order students for the purpose of selection. Difficulties arise when it is used, as it currently is for the assessment of competence. The norm-referenced test is often insensitive to instruction and, while it provides information regarding the relative strengths and weaknesses of students in comparison to their peers, it does not provide an estimate of the absolute level of performance achieved. In addition to promoting competition among students, the norm-referenced test is less suitable for programme evaluation. As it is the principal responsibility of a medical school to produce competent physicians and not to rank order them, it is more reasonable to compare student achievement to an external standard of performance or criterion. Criterion-referenced testing, then, is more suitable for the assessment of competence and, within this setting, percentage competency scores can be utilised when there is a need for the rank ordering of student achievement for the purposes of selection. It is recommended that criterion-referenced testing be the primary method of evaluation, as it best meets the objectives of the medical school by emphasising the achievement of clearly established external standards and, thereby, ensuring a high quality of performance.

Evaluation of student’s competencies on Social Medicine internship with the Objective Structured Clinical Examination method

“…(Newble D, 1994;Turnbull J, 1989) For some authors, the establishment of the pass mark by a criterion-based approach should be preferred in the absence of a need for classification and when the examination concerns a small number of candidates as is the case for end-of-training examinations. (Turnbull J, 1989) Surely, the success rate in our study is very high. But, the breakdown of students by level of success found that 61% had a low success rate and only 8% of students had a high success rate.…”

Twenty Lessons to Incorporate EBM Concept and Practices into Medical Education

“…Unquestionably, the basic aim and approach for the evaluation process is to assess the standard of competency and not the rank order of students. 29 The assessment which simply ranks the order of performance in terms of their position in the group is norm-or normative-referenced assessment. The norm-referenced assessment fails to providea clear picture of what the student can or cannot do.…”

“…pinpoint strengths and weakness and it cannot discern to what degree an educational programme has met these standards. 29 Recognising the norm-referenced assessment's limitations, Glasser in 1963 formalised the concept of criterion-referenced assessment. 30 Standards of performance are set using minimal levels of competence before the test is applied.…”

How the admission criteria to a competitive-entry undergraduate programme could be improved

“…Over the past two decades, many national educational systems have adopted criterion-referenced assessment systems while dropping their old norm-referenced assessment systems (Berry, 2011a;Lamprianou, 2012). Nonetheless, despite the intense theoretical debate about the advantages of criterion-referenced assessments, particularly within high stake contexts (Linn, 1995;Turnbull, 1989), little is known about the impact of such reforms on university admission systems, particularly for undergraduate health professions' programmes. This study demonstrates how criterion-referenced assessment systems within secondary schools could be utilised to improve student selection processes in higher education and beyond.…”