Norm Groups Explained
As I am writing this, Online Talent Manager has over 971 norm tables divided by education, age, sex, leadership experience, commercial experience, and type of testing situation. Individual tests may have 2 or 3 or 20 norm groups to choose from and that can be a little overwhelming. This page is here to explain a little about what a norm group is and how it is used by OTM to calculate a candidate’s scores.
Absolute vs Relative
The first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as an absolute scale of personality. There is no universal measuring stick for ‘introversion’ or ‘extroversion’, for example, there is no magical scale to weigh how friendly you are.
In the absence of an absolute scale, we must use a relative scale, on a relative scale, we use a comparison to some other defined value. A good example of a relative value is temperature. The celsius temperature scale is based on the freezing and boiling points of water at sea level. We are all accustomed to thinking of temperature as an abstract number, but it is a relative number, the temperature relative to the freezing and boiling point of water.
When it comes to personality testing, we do not have a good solid experimental reference like water to fall back on. How extroverted can water be? Instead, we use a large group of people as a reference value. We can say that a candidate is below average,average, or above average on a personality trait when compared to reference group “A”. And that reference group is just another way to say Norm Group. A norm group is a way of describing just what sorts of people you are comparing with a candidate.
How do I choose a Norm Group?
Expert users have the ability to change the norm groups used to calculate a candidate’s scores, but the OTM system automatically chooses the most relevant norm for a candidate. Here is a description of how the OTM system chooses a norm group:
- When the candidate is entered, the client is asked to specify if the candidate is being tested as part of a selection ‘S’ process or as part of a development/coaching ‘B’. The first step is to filter out all of the norms that do not match the situation of the candidate. There are no norms for ‘S’election candidates based on age or sex.
- Other norm groups are removed when they do not match the description of the candidate given by the client.
- Norms are given more ‘weight’ based on how specific they are.
- Whatever norm is left after this filtering and weighting process is chosen and used to calculate the candidate’s scores. If NO norm made it through the process, the ‘default’ norm is used. The ‘default’ norm is the most generic and inclusive norm available in the system.
How are norms made?
Research! A good norm needs from 300 to 400 candidates in it with the criteria you want to define. As tests are taken, the most general categories are filled first (because they are general) and over time more specific categories reach the magic number and get their own group. For each trait, a stanine scale is created that will be used to explain how an individual candidate will compare with the scores of this new group.
Online Talent Manager is continuously monitoring the size of these categories/groups and when they have enough candidates a new norm group is formed. We are also continuously checking to see if the group scores change over time and whether our norms track these changes. To avoid confusion, we put these new and updated norms into the system all at once at the beginning of the calendar year. If you are a client, you will be getting notices about this starting in December and explaining why it is significant.
And that is what a norm is.
