What is Angoff method?
Also called Modified Angoff
The Angoff method sets a passing score by expert judgement rather than by ranking candidates. A panel estimates, for every question, the probability that a just-barely-qualified candidate would answer it correctly. Those probabilities are averaged across judges and summed across questions, and the total becomes the recommended cut score.
Why judgement rather than a percentile
Setting a pass mark at, say, the 60th percentile ties the standard to whoever happened to sit the test. If a weak cohort turns up, the bar falls with them. The Angoff method fixes the standard to the content instead: the question is not 'who is in the top 40%' but 'what would a minimally competent person be able to do'.
That makes it the appropriate family of method for certification, licensure and any decision where a fixed standard has to hold across cohorts and across years.
What a defensible Angoff study actually needs
A written definition of the borderline candidate, agreed before any estimating begins, is the single most important artefact — every judgement in the exercise is relative to it, and panels that skip it produce estimates that disagree for uninteresting reasons.
Then: a panel broad enough to represent the practice, at least two rounds with discussion between them, and — in the modified Angoff — real item statistics shown to judges before the second round, so that estimates can be reconciled with how candidates actually performed. Finally, the standard error of the panel's judgements should be reported: a cut score is itself a measurement and carries error like any other.
A four-item illustration
- Item 1 — three judges estimate 0.80, 0.75, 0.70 → mean 0.75
- Item 2 — 0.55, 0.50, 0.60 → mean 0.55
- Item 3 — 0.40, 0.35, 0.45 → mean 0.40
- Item 4 — 0.90, 0.85, 0.90 → mean 0.883
- Cut score = 0.75 + 0.55 + 0.40 + 0.883 = 2.58 of 4, i.e. 65%
Scale that to a 60-item test and the arithmetic is identical. Note that the cut score is not a round number and should not be rounded to one for presentational comfort — rounding 65% up to 70% moves a real number of people across the line for no measurement reason.
Not the same as norm-referenced pass mark
An Angoff cut score is criterion-referenced: it is fixed to the content and does not move when the cohort changes. A norm-referenced pass mark takes a percentage of the cohort and therefore changes every time the applicant pool does.
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