Assessing Students’ Sourcing Skills in the Service of Research-Based Writing

• In Event: Developing and Establishing Validity Evidence: In Theory and Practice

Abstract

Research and inquiry is fundamentally a problem of building knowledge from multiple information sources. Evaluating sources’ relevance and reliability is a critical element of this process, and thus an important target for instruction and assessment. This paper presents an analysis of the measurement properties of a cognitively-based assessment of research-based writing skills administered to 991 8th graders, with a focus on students’ source evaluation skills. A source evaluation task captured students’ ability to discriminate between relevant, reliable, and useful websites, and students’ proficiency with these skills predicted performance on other research-related tasks. Students’ judgments of topical relevance were considerably more accurate than their judgments of source reliability. These results are discussed with implications for cognitive theory, instruction, and assessment.

Authors

• Jesse R. Sparks, Educational Testing Service

• Paul Deane, Educational Testing Service

• Mary E. Fowles, ETS