The objective of this practice is to provide guidelines for the preparation of samples for interlaboratory studies to evaluate new test methods or for quality control purposes.

These samples prepared using these guidelines may be used for the testing of the precision and bias mandatory for ASTM test methods. Such an evaluation is necessary to provide guidance to the user as to the reliability of measurements that can be expected by its use. The statements are developed on the basis of user experience (ordinarily through interlaboratory studies) with the test method.

The availability of appropriate samples is a key requirement for interlaboratory studies.

The homogeneity of the sample produced for interlaboratory studies must be small enough so that the variance caused by the sample is small compared to the variance of the test being performed.