STANDARD SCORES

MEASURES OF RELATIVE POSITION

Measures of relative position indicate where a score falls in relation to all other
scores in the distribution. Researchers often want to assess an individual’s relative
position in a group or to compare the relative position of one individual on two or more
measures or of two or more individuals on the same measure. The most widely used
statistics for these purposes are z scores, stanines, other standard scores, and percentile
rank.

Z SCORE

The most widely used measure of relative position is the z score, which indicates
the positive or negative difference between an individual score and the mean as measured
in standard deviation units. It and other indexes derived from it are known as standard
scores. The z score is defined as the distance of a score from the mean as measured by
standard deviation units.

STANINE SCORES

Stanines avoid negative numbers and decimals. A stanine score of 5 represents z

scores that are average or slightly above or slightly below average—that is, equivalent to
z scores between −0.25 and +0.25. From there, stanine scores go up to 9 and down to 1 in
increments of 0.5. The formula for stanines is 2z+5.You convert a z score to a stanine by
multiplying by 2 and adding 5. Stanines are always rounded to the nearest whole number.
Whenever this formula yields a result greater than 9, the value 9 is assigned. Whenever
the result is less than 1, the value 1 is assigned. Because all z scores above 1.75 are
assigned a stanine score of 9 and all z scores below −1.75 are assigned a score of 1,
stanine scores are not useful for comparing extreme scores. Stanines are easy to
comprehend. Like all transformations of the z score, they have universal meaning. A
stanine score of 4 always means below average but not too far below average. Stanines
are often used in school systems for reporting students’ standardized test scores.

T score
T Score is another standardized score that has the mean set at 50 and a standard
deviation set at 10. This variant of standard score was suggested by McCall (1922). In the T-
score method, the mean is set at 50, unlike in z score where the value of mean is zero. To
obtain a T-score, the z score is multiplied by 10 and then added to or subtracted from the
mean T-score of 50. The scale used in the computation of T scores is called a “fifty plus or
minus ten” scale. T –score is calculated from z score by using the formula:

T=10z+ 50
 Thus, a standard score of +1.00 becomes a T-score of 60, while that of -1.00 becomes
a T-score of 40. The assumption in this technique is that nearly all the scores will be within a
range of five standard deviations from the mean. Since each SD is divided into 10 units, T-
score is based upon a scale of 100 units, thus avoiding negative scores and fractions. The
fact that T – score can never have a negative value gives it an advantage over z-score.
Further, T-score, found for an individual, is relevant only to the distribution of scores of the
group from which the values have been derived and with which his score is being compared.
A widely used personality test, Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) uses
T –scores as standardized measure.

Z score, indicates in terms of standard deviation as to how far a particular score is

below or above the mean of the distribution. The mean and standard deviation of a set of z
scores are 0 and 1, respectively. With the help of z-score, a raw score on a distribution can
be transformed to an equivalent score on the other distribution.

T score is another standardized score that has the mean set at 50 and a standard
deviation set at 10.

In stanine scores, the standard population is divided into nine groups; that is
’standard nine’ termed as ‘stanine’.

References and Further readings

Brennan, R. L. (2001). Some problems, pitfalls, and paradoxes in educational measurement.
Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 20(4), 6–18.

Messick, S. (1995). Validity of psychological assessment. American Psychologist, 50(9),

741–749. Thorndike, R. M. (2005). Measurement and evaluation in psychology and
education. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Pearson.


Brennan, R. L. (2001). Some problems, pitfalls, and paradoxes in educational measurement.

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 20(4), 6–18.


Ary, Donald.(2010). Introduction to Research in Education. USA:Library of Congress