The benchmarks can help you interpret scores on ACLSA or supplemental assessments for youth you work with. Average or “mean” scores are typical scores on an assessment for youth (or their caregivers, in the case of caregiver versions) indexed by the youth’s age, race/ethnicity, gender, or living situation group. The standard deviation indicates how widely the scores varied around the mean score, while the “N” allows you to see how many individuals were in the group on which the benchmark scores are based. Benchmark scores for groups of 50 or more individuals are considered representative for youth of that age, race/ethnicity, or living situation; benchmark scores for groups of less than 50 individuals are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution. Please note that “N”s in subgroups may not always sum up exactly to match the “N”s for larger groups due to missing data on some group-defining variables.

Groups for which benchmarks are established are pre-defined. We have tried to include as many age, gender, race/ethnicity and living situation groups as possible in the benchmarks for each assessment. Unfortunately, we are not able to present benchmark information for all possible groups.

benchmark information is presented in Microsoft Excel format, so you will need to have that software installed on your computer in order to read the benchmark file. We use Excel pivot tables to present the benchmark data because they allow the user to quickly and easily extract desired information from the larger table. The pivot table may seem a little confusing if you have not seen one before, but if that is the case we urge you to take a bit of time to familiarize yourself with how it works. With a bit of practice, we think you will find it a useful and efficient way to pull the information you want out of the larger data table.