AMEE Guide No. 18: Standard setting in student assessment

TLDR

Licensure, credentialing, and academic institutions are seeking innovative approaches to assess professional competence, and setting performance standards is essential to distinguish competent from non‑competent candidates, yet no single recommended approach exists. The guide aims to familiarize readers with standard‑setting frameworks, principles, key concepts, and practical considerations. It enables readers to make educated choices in selecting the most appropriate standard‑setting approach for their testing needs.

Abstract

AbstractLicensure, credentialling and academic institutions are seeking new innovative approaches to the assessment of professional competence. Central to these recent initiatives is the need to determine standards of performance, which separate the competent from the non-competent candidate. Setting standards for performance assessment is a relatively new area of study. Consequently, there is no one recommended approach to setting standards. The goal of this guide is to familiarize the reader with the framework, principles, key concepts and practical considerations of standard setting approaches and to enable the reader to make 'educated' choices in selecting the most appropriate standard setting approach for their testing needs.