Professional in Human Resources (PHR) Practice Exam 2025 – The All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

The term that describes the middle point in a set of data where 50% of scores lie above and below is the median. The median is found by arranging the data points in ascending order and selecting the middle value. If there is an even number of observations, the median is calculated by taking the average of the two middle numbers. This makes the median a robust measure of central tendency, particularly in sets with outliers or skewed data, as it is not affected by extreme values.

In contrast, the mode refers to the value that appears most frequently in a data set, while the mean is the average of all the values, calculated by adding them together and dividing by the number of values. The term "average" can refer to the mean but is more general and can also be used to describe the median or mode depending on context. Therefore, when looking for the specific statistical term that indicates the middle value in a distribution, the correct choice is the median.