Which category includes unstructured interviews and projective techniques?

• A. Informal assessment
• B. Formal standardized testing
• C. Criterion-referenced testing
• D. Norm-referenced testing

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how assessments are categorized by how they gather and use information about a student. Unstructured interviews and projective techniques are flexible, nonstandard methods that teachers use to gain in-depth insights into a student’s thinking, attitudes, and processes. They’re not administered the same way to every student, and they aren’t scored against fixed norms or universal criteria. Instead, they provide qualitative, descriptive data that helps a teacher understand where a student stands in a more nuanced way and to tailor instruction accordingly. That makes them a hallmark of informal assessment, which includes observations, interviews, portfolios, and other nonstandard approaches used throughout teaching.

Formal standardized testing, by contrast, relies on uniform procedures and items, with scoring tied to normative data to compare a student or group to others. Criterion-referenced testing measures performance against specific objectives, not norms, and norm-referenced testing compares to a reference group. Neither of these rely on unstructured interviews or projective techniques, which is why the described methods fit informal assessment best.