Types of Standards: Performance, Criteria, Superseded

Standards have different purposes. The purpose of the standard determines its type. Some standard types include:

Performance Specification Standards

Performance specification standards do not describe how a thing is made. Instead, they describe how a thing should perform under certain conditions. SAE J2782, Performance Specifications for a Midsize Male Pedestrian Research Dummy Links to an external site. is a performance specification standard. It describes how a crash-test dummy should react to a pedestrian-automobile collision.

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Criteria Standards

Criteria standards discuss how to go about an activity. Criteria standards give recommendations for certain aspects of an activity. Did you know there is a criteria standard for hayride attractions? ASTM F3168 Standard Practice for Hayride Attractions gives recommendations about how to operate hayrides.

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Superseded Standards

Standards change over time as quality, technology and human needs change. Superseded standards are those standards that are no longer active. They can provide valuable information when researching an older area of activity. If you need to know how elevators were designed in the 1930s, you could look at a superseded standard. 

One example is the Elevator Code and Rules and Regulations for the Safe and Proper Use Links to an external site. from 1938, located in the archives of HathiTrust. The Art, Architecture & Engineering Library has access to many superseded standards.