Bar Exam: A generic term for a standardized, criterion-referenced test that prospective lawyers must pass in order to be licensed to practice in a state.

Construct: A theorized phenomenon that cannot be directly observed or measured (e.g., intelligence).

Criterion-referenced Test: A test that evaluates student performance against a predetermined set of objectives or criteria (e.g., bar exam). Contrasts with norm-referenced.

Differential Item Functioning: A measure of item quality that uses various statistical techniques to examine whether an item may be biased towards one or more groups.

Difficulty: A measure of item quality that examines the proportion of participants who answered an item correctly.

Discrimination: A measure of item quality that examines the proportion of high-performing participants who answered an item correctly in comparison to the proportion of low-performing participants who answered it correctly.

Domain: The overall universe of content or subject matter that relates to the nature and purpose of a test.

Domain Sampling: The process of selecting a representative sample set of items from a test´s content domain.

Equating: The process by which raw scores from different tests or different versions of the same test are translated to a new scale so that direct comparisons can be made.

Equipercentile Equating: A process of equating based on the percentile ranks of scores.

Horizontal Equating: A process of equating which allows for meaningful comparisons for the same group of students across time.

Linear Equating: A process of equating which involves specifying the desired mean and standard deviation of the final distribution ahead of time and using those values to directly calculate new scores.

Norm-referenced Test: A test that evaluates student performance by comparing students to each other (e.g., ACT). Contrasts with criterion-referenced.

Psychometrician: An expert in the statistical analysis and design of tests.

Score Interpretation: The method in which a student´s score on a test is evaluated. Criterion-referenced and norm-referenced are the two primary ways of interpreting scores on a test.

Table of Specifications: A table or "blueprint" that details how a test´s items should be constructed, from what content areas, and in what proportions.

Test Specifications: An overall outline that details the characteristics of a test. More specifically, it defines a test´s format, the total number and proportion of test items from each content domain, the type of item formats to be used, how the items will be scored, the method of interpreting test scores, and the time limit (if applicable) for taking the test.

Vertical Equating: A process of equating which allows for meaningful comparison on a single test across grades or age ranges.