Ceiling Effect Vs Floor Effect

It could have floor effects for say 4th graders and a ceiling effect for college students.

Ceiling effect vs floor effect. Also called a basement effect. Referees usually asks about the existence of ceiling effect or floor effect in the process of instrument development. The inability of a test to measure or discriminate below a certain point usually because its items are too difficult. The ceiling effect is observed when an independent variable no longer has an effect on a dependent variable or the level above which variance in an independent variable is no longer measurable.

This lower limit is known as the floor. I am interested to find the way i can statistically assess them. For example the distribution of scores on an ability test will be skewed by a floor effect if the test is much too difficult for many of the respondents and many of them obtain zero scores. Most of the subjects could not score near the top and near the bottom.

Psychology definition of floor effect. The specific application varies slightly in differentiating between two areas of use for this term. In statistics a floor effect also known as a basement effect arises when a data gathering instrument has a lower limit to the data values it can reliably specify.