They Think Less of My Handwritten Essay If Others Word Process Theirs?

Abstract

A study was undertaken to determine the effects on essay scores of intermingling handwritten and word‐processed versions of student essays. A sample of examinees, each of whom had produced both a handwritten and a word‐processed essay, was drawn from a larger sample of students who had participated in a pilot study of a new academic skills assessment battery. Students’original handwritten essays were converted to word‐processed versions, and their original word‐processed essays were converted to handwritten versions. Analyses revealed higher average scores for essays scored in the handwritten mode than for essays scored as word processed, regardless of the mode in which essays were originally produced. Several hypotheses were advanced to explain the discrepancies between scores on handwritten and word‐processed essays. The training of essay readers was subsequently modified on the basis of these hypotheses, and the experiment was repeated using the modified training with a new set of readers.