Weaknesses of the Traditional View of Standard Setting and a Suggested Alternative

Abstract

In this paper, we expand the traditional perspective on standard setting to include the necessary antecedents to a genuinely valid setting of standards, and use that conceptual framework to propose a new foundation for standard setting. These necessary antecedents include (a) the definition of an underlying variable on which the “standard” will be set in a way that is designed to be suitable for that standard setting, (b) the selection of a qualitatively definable point on that variable that corresponds to “enough” for the standard to be met, (c) the development of a suitable procedure (“test”) and expression of its results in a suitable way to readily afford use in a standard setting proced..