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sourceDocument: Brazil Governance, Risk, and Compliance
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/governance-risk-compliance

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ft:publication_title :

    - Brazil Governance, Risk, and Compliance

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# Normalization in assessment

# Normalization in assessment {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Brazil  
Updated September 10, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 3 minutes to read
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![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI  
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## Summary of Normalization in assessment

Normalization in the Smart Assessment Engine adjusts assessment question scores to a common scale, ensuring fair comparison and prioritization across different assessments.
This process transforms raw scores into standardized values, addressing inconsistencies caused by varying question types, difficulty levels, and scoring methodologies.
Normalization supports question types such as number, drop-down, radio button, and check box, enabling reliable aggregation and analysis of scores for accurate insights.
Show full answer Show less  

## Key Features

* **Default and Custom Normalization Strategies:** Template admins define default normalization strategies based on the assessment template's purpose, with options to use linear normalization or create custom formulas.
* **Configuration Flexibility:** Normalization can be enabled or disabled at multiple levels---assessment, section, subsection, or individual questions. Overrides allow custom settings at each level without affecting others.
* **Normalization States:** The system tracks normalization states such as default strategy with or without overrides, custom strategies, and disabled normalization, providing clarity on applied configurations.

## Benefits

* Ensures all scores are standardized on the same scale, facilitating accurate aggregation and comparison.
* Enhances transparency by making assessment results easier to understand through consistent scaling.
* Simplifies data analysis by removing complexity from combining scores with different scales or methods.
* Supports consistent and fair evaluation, enabling more informed decision-making based on comparable scores.

## Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers

By leveraging normalization in Smart Assessment Engine, ServiceNow customers can trust that their assessment scores are fairly adjusted and comparable across diverse assessments and question types. This standardization is crucial for generating reliable analytics and insights, supporting better prioritization and decision-making in risk, compliance, or performance evaluations. Admins can tailor normalization settings to fit organizational needs, ensuring consistent scoring logic throughout their assessment templates.  
Normalization in Smart Assessment Engine refers to adjusting assessment question scores to a common scale to promote fair comparison and prioritization.

## Exploring normalization {#normalization-in-assessment__section_fgh_vxg_vfc}

Scoring in Smart Assessment Engine enables you to translate qualitative responses into quantitative data, which provides a measurable and comparable outcome for each assessment. For more information on scoring, refer to [Scoring assessments](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/sCdaNCisxJUPwQGyoTRT7g "Scoring in Smart Assessment Engine is a systematic way to evaluate responses to various questions within an assessment. By attributing scores to answers, you can translate qualitative responses into quantitative data, offering a measurable and comparable outcome for each assessment."). Normalization in scoring addresses the issue of inconsistent scoring scales across different assessments, promoting fairness and comparability. It enables accurate aggregation and analysis of
scores, regardless of varying question difficulty or formats. Without normalization, scores from different assessments or sections can be misleading, leading to unfair evaluations and inaccurate insights. Normalization is supported
for number, drop-down, radio button, and check box type questions.

Normalization is the process by which raw scores (the actual score earned) are transformed into a standardized range or distribution. This transformation facilitates comparison across different questions, sections, subsections, or
entire assessments. The normalization feature confirms that scores from various components, which may differ in structure, difficulty, or scoring methods, are adjusted to a common scale. This is essential for providing fair
comparisons, accurate analytics, and consistent insights. Normalization helps standardize these measurements, enabling different metrics or scores to be evaluated on the same scale.

The assessment admin defines the default normalization strategy for template categories, confirming consistent scoring logic across assessments. They can also configure the normalization formula or create custom formulas.  
The template manager can do the following:

* Enables or disables normalization after scoring and aggregation details are set up.
* Defines normalization parameters at various aggregation levels (assessment, section, subsection or questions)
* Overrides default normalization parameters to determine the best strategy for their assessment.
{#normalization-in-assessment__ul_qp5_zp3_1gc}

Learn how normalization adjusts individual assessment scores to a common scale, enabling comparison across different assessments. For more information, refer to [Score normalization](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/IoTjMNwPnhJ7ntpxgzHGzQ "In Smart Assessment Engine normalization maps the actual scores to a standardized scale, typically from 0 through 100, enabling a unified evaluation framework.").

## Default normalization {#normalization-in-assessment__section_jrn_hbq_1gc}

A template's purpose determines its default normalization settings, including whether normalization is enabled and which normalization strategy is used. Changing the purpose resets normalization settings, but reassigning the purpose
is required to update template values. You can define a default normalization configuration and apply it automatically at various levels within an assessment, including the assessment itself, sections, subsections, and individual
questions. The Linear normalization strategy is available by default. You can also create a custom normalization strategy. For more information, refer to [Create a normalization strategy](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/12a5iq6~eaVHuWzUiksr5Q "You can create a custom normalization strategy as required.").

## Normalization configuration behavior {#normalization-in-assessment__section_dw1_2hq_1gc}

Normalization behaves differently depending on whether it's overridden at a specific level. An override happens when you manually change the normalization settings at a level. Examples of overrides include:

* Turning normalization on when it's off by default
* Turning normalization off when it's on by default
* Modifying the strategy or input values while normalization is enabled

If you don't override the configuration, enabling scoring at a level applies normalization using default values. Changes to those defaults are reflected across levels. Disabling scoring also disables normalization.

However, if you override the configuration, any changes made to the default settings won't affect that level, it will retain the customized behavior you have set.

## States of normalization {#normalization-in-assessment__section_lhq_qkw_1gc}

The normalization state can vary at all levels based on the normalization strategy used or any updates made to it.

Default strategy from template settings
:   This state is displayed when default normalization is enabled and no configurations are overridden.

Default strategy with some overrides
:   This state is displayed when default normalization is enabled and only input values are changed, with the same strategy as default.

Custom strategy
:   This state is displayed when the normalization strategy differs from the default or when normalization is enabled explicitly at the level despite being turned off by default.

Set up normalization
:   This state is displayed when normalization is turned off at the level, either due to default settings or explicit user action.

## Benefits of normalization {#normalization-in-assessment__section_nlq_zsh_vfc}

Normalization in Smart Assessment Engine offers numerous benefits, confirms that all scores are on the same scale, making it easier to aggregate and analyze data.

* Normalization provides transparency in the assessment process, as scores are adjusted to a common scale, making it easier to understand the results.
* Normalization simplifies aggregation by removing the complexity of aggregating scores across different scoring scales and methodologies.
* Normalization creates a uniform scoring model, enabling consistent comparisons.
* Normalization makes it easier to understand and interpret scores, as they're all on the same scale.
* Normalization enables decision-makers to make more informed decisions, as they're based on a consistent and fair comparison of scores.
{#normalization-in-assessment__ul_ohf_d5h_vfc}