Mark W. Vernoy,
Palomar College Diana J. Kyle,
Fullerton College
Scaled Scores And Standard Scores: How To Change Apples Into Oranges
Glossary
Scaled scores
are scores that are adjusted via some type of scale by applying the same constant to all the scores in the distribution.
Standard scores or z scores
are uniform values to which any raw score value can be converted. A z score indicates the number of standard deviation units a raw score is positioned either above or below the mean.
is a distribution of transformed raw scores with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of 1. The transformation of a distribution of raw scores into a distribution of z scores allows comparisons between different distributions to be made.