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Revision of the Standards: An advisory note on Subscore Reporting

The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (APA, AERA, & NCME, 2014) (Standards) was recently revised and updated.  As credentialing organizations begin to process what the revised version of the Standards means to them, it is important to point out most of the workplace testing and credentialing chapter remained the same.  However, statements about the need for reliable subscore reporting are of vast importance, as is the design of examination score reports.

Subscore reporting has often been a topic of debate within the field of credentialing and we often ask ourselves the question “To report or not to report?”  Examinees, or candidates as they are known in the field of credentialing, have a desire to understand their strengths and weaknesses as they relate to different sections of the larger examination.  This desire comes from the high-stakes decisions associated with earning the credential.

The thought process in favor of subscore reporting is that this type of feedback can benefit candidates in improving their knowledge and scores and therefore help them to obtain the credential if they fail the exam. There are typically two kinds of objections to reporting subscores. One kind is practical: will the program’s staff be inundated with questions about subscores that they may not have the resources to answer? Or, in the case of programs that do not announce raw cut scores, will candidates be able to calculate the raw cut score from the information provided? The other kind of objection is rooted in measurement: if the subscores are not reliable, candidates may be ill served by the information provided to them. One thing is clear: when subscores are reported, candidates should be made aware of measurement error and cautioned in their interpretation of the score reports (Owens & Lima, 2015).

For a more thorough discussion on subscore reporting please see our recently published article, Subscore reporting: An updated reminder from the revised Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (Owens & Lima, 2015) at http://www.clearhq.org/page-1721345#spring15. It was recently published in the Spring 2015, Volume 25, edition of the CLEAR Exam Review journal.

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