Writing Ability as a Predictor of Undergraduate Accounting Academic Performance

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  In Poster Session: ELS Poster Session and Friday Reception

Abstract

Previous studies have looked at the relationship between accounting students' overall academic performance and the grades in specific introductory and intermediate level accounting courses. Other studies have included additional courses, i.e. management, advanced and auditing.

To date, we are not aware of any study that has examined the relationship between a measure of writing ability and overall performance of accounting students. While implemented in different ways on each campus, all 23 campuses of the California State University (CSU) system have implemented the Graduate Writing Assessment Requirement (GWAR). On the Stanislaus campus this involves a writing test administered to all third year university students at the beginning of their junior year.

In this study, we apply a structural equation model (SEM) using accounting students' transcript data to examine the relationship between writing ability as measured in the writing test and student performance both within the accounting curriculum level and at the university level.

We found that writing ability does not have a direct effect on student performance at the university level. However, there is an indirect effect whereby writing ability has an effect on student performance at the accounting curriculum level, which in turn has an effect at the university level.

Authors

• Annhenrie Campbell, California State University, Stanislaus

• David H. Lindsay, California State University, Stanislaus

• Kim K Tan, California State University, Stanislaus

• Freddie Choo, San Francisco State University