Chapter 24.

Standardized scores worked example

Two examples of using standardized scores

In Example 1 we are looking at the individual exam scores of two students in the subjects of mathematics and English. This example will enable you to gain an understanding of the principles of standardized scores. Example in understanding research data. gives a social research example that shows how the techni!ue is useful

Example 1

"ne student has their exam result in mathematics and a second student has their exam result in English. The second student has a higher mark than the first student# however$ given that the exam marks for English and mathematics have different distributions$ it is not possible to say that the second student has gained a higher achievement. In order to make a judgement as to whether the second student has done better than the first$ we need to judge their mark according to the mean and standard deviation of each set of marks. %or each value$ in this case a student&s exam mark$ a ' score converts how far each exam mark is from the mean exam mark in units of standard deviation.

The formula for calculating ' scores is(

zi =
where zi ) individual ' score

xi x s

xi ) individual observed value$ for example$ exam mark

x ) mean for the set of data

s ) standard deviation. * positive ' score means that the observed data is above the mean. * negative ' score means that the observed data is below the mean. +elow is a worked example(

Student One: ,athematics exam mark of -./. ,ean 0./. 1tandard deviation ) 0.Student Two: English exam mark of 2./. ,ean --/. 1tandard deviation ) 1..0 1tudent "ne&s mathematics exam mark converted into a ' score(

1tudent Two&s English exam mark converted into a ' score(

+oth students have a positive ' score$ which means that they both did above average in their respective exams. 1tudent "ne has a higher ' score than 1tudent Two. *lthough 1tudent Two gained the higher exam mark$ 1tudent "ne actually did better in relation to the other students sitting the exam in mathematics.

1tandardized scores are applied in lots of different research settings. 3ow that you have grasped the basic principles of how standardized scores are calculated consider the following research example.

Useful Properties of Standardized Scores "bservations converted into standardized scores have the following properties( the mean of a standardized variable will always be zero$ and the standard deviation of a standardized variable will always be one. 1tandardized scores are particularly useful for ranking cases based on more than one standardized variable.

Using !" S#SS Statistics 1$ to calculate standardized scores

%rom the %nal&ze menu select 'escripti(e Statistics and 'escripti(es. The 'escripti(es dialogue box will be displayed 4%igure 0.115. *s with the previous I+, 1611 1tatistics 17 command$ first

highlight the re!uired variable4s5 on the left8hand side and click once on the arrow button

to move

the variable across to under )aria*le+s,-. 9lick once in the box next to Sa(e standardized (alues as (aria*les. If the default settings for the statistics are not re!uired$ click on .ptions and remove the ticks from all options$ then click on Continue. 9lick on ./ to execute the command. Two new variables will be calculated and displayed in the data window. The variable names are prefixed with a ' 4see %igure 0.1 5.

If the ' variable will be re!uired in future I+, 1611 1tatistics 17 sessions$ the data file must be saved. To save the changes in the data file$ first view the data file by selecting the 0indow menu and 1 1data file name2. To save the changes select the 3ile menu and Sa(e.

3igure 24.11 !" S#SS Statistics 1$ 'escripti(es dialogue *ox

3igure 24.12 Examples of 5 scores calculated in !" S#SS Statistics 1$