Over the past few years, the TOEIC®

Over the past few years, the TOEIC®
test examinees and test users have increasingly expressed the
need to better understand the meaning of reported scaled scores, which are numeric scores and
provide information pertaining only to an individual’s relative performance on a specific TOEIC test
scale. In addition to scaled scores, the TOEIC test customers would also like to obtain diagnostic-like
information pertaining to a scaled score, such as what English–language skills an individual has and
how well-developed these skills are. This information can play an instrumental role in activities related
to learning, instruction and employment selection for both examinees and test users. To meet this
customer need, a TOEIC test scale anchoring study was conducted at ETS in May 2005 as a part of
the test development plan for the Redesigned TOEIC Listening and Reading test. The purpose of the
study was to provide examinees with descriptive score proficiency information related to their TOEIC
test scaled scores.
The study used the scale anchoring method, which is a method used by several well-known largescale
assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; Beaton & Allen,
1992), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS; Kelly, 1999), and the
TOEFL iBT™ test (TOEFL iBT™; Zhang, 2006). This paper describes: (a) the data and the procedures
used to develop the proficiency descriptions, (b) how to use and interpret the score proficiency
information, (c) how the score proficiency descriptions we