Writing Assessment Results 2008

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Summary of Writing Assessment
Members of the Curriculum Committee evaluated a set of randomly selected research papers from psychology undergraduate classes.  Each member evaluated 4 papers and comments on the papers were discussed in group format.  Overall, students exhibited writing skills commensurate with their educational level.  Some papers were exceptionally well-written.  The body of the papers as well as the reference sections were (for the most part) written in APA style.  The papers appeared to represent an even distribution, with about one half of the papers rated as A/B papers by committee members and the other half rated as C or Below papers.  The Method sections were written well, containing all parts required for APA format.  While there were several negative critiques of the inappropriate use of statistics in papers, it is unclear whether or not students had the level of statistical expertise (to be able to write about statistical results) that committee members were expecting.  This issue will be addressed in a future departmental retreat focusing on teaching writing and statistical skills.  Based on committee member feedback, the following areas were identified as areas for improvement in student writing that can be addressed in the curriculum.

Areas for Improvement

APA Style and General Writing Style
*Problems with some references not being APA style
*Appendices and Figures not APA style
*A few papers had very poor grammar, typos, and poor sentence structure, others good; unclear if poorly written papers due to time management or lack of writing skill
*Statistics reported were often not APA style
*Some papers were written in a generally informal manner

Introduction Sections
*Often lacking hypotheses
*Often do not tie studies together in lit review, unclear why talking about certain studies
*Often lack a logical flow that lead to rationale for current study and/or hypotheses

Method Sections
*Overall, papers were often lacking details required (e.g., participant section)
*Often lacking clear description of constructs
*Often lacking a detailed description of measures being used
*Procedure sections were often incomplete
*Misused terms (e.g., random selection)

Results Sections
*Often used stats incorrectly, cited stats in non-APA style, or discussed stats incorrectly
*Some papers were missing a results section

Discussion Sections
*Overall, the discussion sections were the most problematic
*Often lacked implications/alternate explanations
*Often did not tie results to previous literature
*Often lacked advanced discussion of limitations
*General lack of synthesis
*Grammar problems (in papers with general writing style problems)