Praxis School Psychology Practice Exam 2026 – Comprehensive Test Prep

A percentile rank is a statistical measure that tells you what percentage of scores fall below a particular score in a distribution. It reflects the relative standing of an individual score within that distribution. For example, if a student is in the 85th percentile, this means that they scored higher than 85% of the individuals in the comparison group.

Focusing on option B, the assertion that it tends to exaggerate score differences that are farther from the mean holds true because percentile ranks can create a perception of greater differences in scores that are significantly above or below the median. This occurs because the distribution of scores may not be uniform; as scores move away from the mean in a normal distribution, the representation of percentile ranks tends to stretch out the distances between ranks, which may give an inflated view of the differences between those high or low scores.

In contrast, the other options do not accurately describe percentile ranks. Saying that it is an equal-interval measurement does not apply since percentile ranks do not have equal spacing; the difference between the 20th and 40th percentiles is not necessarily the same in terms of score values as the difference between the 60th and 80th percentiles. The assertion that it measures the average of a set of