Research on standards for professional licensure and certification examinations

The purpose of this article is to outline an agenda for research on standards for professional licensure and certification examinations. To avoid confusion, scores are defined as content-based decisions about the correctness of responses, and standards refer to the educational/social decisions about how many questions need to be answered correctly to pass. Standards are the focus of this article. The two major types of standards, relative and absolute, are described and the major standard-setting methods for each are presented. Some of the published results in four different areas are reviewed: (a) basis of the judgements, (b) efficiency of the process, (c) group effects, and (d) content and expertise effects. Topics for future research in all four areas are identified.