Normative Evaluation

Normative evaluation consists of an assessment technique where the quality of an individual’s performance is defined based on the comparison to the performance of others who took the same test. When using this technique, each participant’s score is interpreted considering the average score of the group, meaning that every individual will be ranked in a position above, below, or equal to the average level.

Let’s look at an example: a class teacher wants to select the best students to participate in a writing contest. To compare each student’s writing performance with the rest of the class, he decides to do a normative evaluation by applying a writing test to all the students. Knowing that the average score on the test is 50, he can now select the students whose score is above average and have a better chance at winning the contest.

When making a normative evaluation, it is usual for the results to be presented in a percentile ranking or to be plotted on a bell curve.