Comparative Assessments

Abstract

As stated by Sun Tzu, “The ground gives rise to measurement, measurements give rise to assessments, assessments give rise to calculations, calculations give rise to comparisons, and comparisons give rise to victories.” Comparative assessments are a specific categorization of tests, which are used to determine whether two or more data sets are significantly different from each other. For example, in measuring the operational performance of two similar groups, the data may indicate that the two groups have different average performance, different performance ranges, deviations, skew, and so forth, but by just utilizing these simple descriptive statistics described in chapter 1, the possibility exists that the differences between them are not statistically significant. There may be differences in the samples that were pulled from each group, but those differences may not be present in the populations from which those samples were pulled. One group may have a mean that is slightly higher or lower than the other but with a much larger range, or the standard error of each group may be greater than the differential between the two means, making it impossible to determine whether there is actually a difference in performance between the two organizations through casual observation.