Presentation Mode Effects in Large-Scale Writing Assessments

• In Event: Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Issues in Assessment Development and Practice in Public School Classrooms

Abstract

To ensure valid measurement in large-scale assessments it is important to avoid incorporating construct-irrelevant aspects. We investigated a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance, i.e. the presentation mode of essays (handwritten vs. computer-typed) and its influence on scoring. Further, we investigated whether the presentation mode effect is moderated by text quality, legibility and orthographic, grammatical and punctuation erroneousness. Rater-teams scored two versions of 430 student essays (originally handwritten vs. computer-typed transcripts) written by students at the end of lower secondary education in Germany on contentual and stylistic quality, and on the considered moderators. Analyses showed a main effect for presentation mode revealing that computer-typed transcripts were scored higher than handwritten essays. This effect was moderated by text quality and grammatical erroneousness.

Authors

• Thomas Canz, FernUniversität in Hagen

• Lars Hoffmann