Arvosteluasteikko

Arvosteluasteikko is a system for assigning quantitative or qualitative evaluations to performance, quality, or attributes. It is used widely in Finland and elsewhere in education, employment, media reviews, consumer surveys, and research. The term encompasses numerical, letter, and descriptive scales, and is often ordinal, ranking categories from lower to higher levels of achievement or quality.

Common forms include numerical scales such as 0–5 or 1–5, 0–10; letter grades such as A–F; descriptive scales such as poor, satisfactory, good, excellent; and multi-item Likert-type scales measuring attitudes or satisfaction. Scales may be unipolar (measuring a single dimension from zero to a maximum) or bipolar (including a midpoint and opposing positive and negative sides). Some scales include explicit anchors to clarify what each point represents.

Construction and interpretation: A clear definition of categories or anchors is essential, as is consistency across raters and contexts. Rubrics or scoring guidelines improve reliability and validity. Common issues include leniency, central tendency, halo effects, and cultural or language differences affecting interpretation. In research, scales are analyzed as ordinal data or, with caution, treated as interval data.

In Finland, arvosteluasteikko is used in education and public reviews; it can refer to a course grade or evaluation in a broader sense. The exact scale varies by institution and level, with official transcripts or rubrics detailing what each category means.