Pluralistic diagnosis is a set of developed procedures which attempts to take sociocultural background into account in assessing the meaning of scores on standardized measures. This approach has developed as an outgrowth of findings from an epidemiology of mental retardation which have been conducted in the city of Riverside, California, over the past eight years. There are clinical and social criteria by which students are labeled mentally retarded. The study concludes by noting that a pluralistic diagnostic procedure involves securing information beyond that are ordinarily considered in clincial evaluation. The findings suggest that only persons in the lowest 3 percent of the population should be labeled as subnormals, and that information about adaptive behavior should be considered as well as intelligence test scores in making clincial assessments. Only persons who are subnormal both on the intelligence test and in adaptive behavior should be regarded as clinically retarded. (Author)