Which statement describes the range of scores?

• A. the mean of the scores.
• B. the standard deviation of the scores.
• C. the difference between the highest and lowest scores in a dataset.
• D. the variance of the scores.

Answer: (C)

The range captures how spread out the scores are by looking at the overall span from the smallest to the largest value. It is defined as the difference between the highest and lowest scores. For example, if scores are 62, 75, 83, and 92, the range is 92 minus 62, which equals 30. This tells you how far apart the extreme scores are.

The mean describes the central value around which scores cluster, not how spread out they are. The standard deviation and the variance both measure dispersion around the mean, not the total range from min to max. The range is a simple, but sometimes crude, gauge of spread because it depends only on the extreme values and can be highly affected by outliers.