Comparing Essays Written Under Different Timing Conditions

Writing Subject Test, which included a 20minute timed essay and a 40-minute multiplechoice section. The time requirement for the essay was established after a review of research on the effects of essay timing on reader reliability, student scores, and task difficulty for students at different ability levels. Research from that effort is relevant today as we design the new SAT I writing section. ETS conducted a study (Livingston, 1987) that examined differences in essay scores completed under three separate timing conditions: (a) 20 minutes, (b) 30 minutes, and (c) 30 minutes with separately timed sections of 10 minutes for planning and 20 minutes for writing. Two different essay topics were employed in the study. Results showed that the two essays differed in difficulty—one essay was clearly easier for the majority of students irrespective of ability level, timing, or order of presentation. Several conclusions from that study were made concerning essay timing: • The effect of an extra 10 minutes (allowing 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes) was “very small in relation to the other sources of variation,” and the effect of students’ ability on the difference between a 20and 30-minute essay was far short of significant (p = .23). • Providing students with 30 minutes, but requiring a 10-minute planning period (condition c above) appeared to lower scores if this essay came first, and appeared to have a slight increase in scores if it was the second essay. • Additional analyses were conducted on students by ability level: – For students with low ability, neither the extra time nor topic made a difference in their score. – Students who scored in the middle range of performance (scored between 6 and 8 on the 2–12 scale) were examined carefully because these are the students where course placement is most in doubt. Again, the difference between a 20-minute essay and 30-minute essay (in either conditions b or c) for this group did not even “approach statistical significance” (p. 10). The additional 10 minutes increased scores by 1/10 to 1/6 of a point on the 2–12 scale. – For high-ability students, an extra 10 minutes (in either conditions b or c) appeared to improve scores by an average of 1/2 point. Crone, Wright, and Baron (1993) also examined the effects of essay length in a study conducted to determine the final essay timing for the SAT II: Writing Test. Approximately 7,100 high school juniors and seniors completed several test sections from the SAT I verbal, SAT II: Writing Test (multiplechoice), the Test of Standard Written English, and two essays of 30 minutes or 15 minutes in length. Results clearly showed that examinees received lower essay scores in the 15-minute condition than in the 30-minute condition (the mean difference on a 2–12 scale was 1.22). Crone et al. (1993) determined that students were able to write reasonable essays in 15 minutes, albeit of marginally lower quality than 30 minutes, and with little impact on the overall rank order of students. The study went further to examine if the time difference had any impact on ethnic/racial minorities or language minorities. The study confirmed that English Second Language (ESL) students scored lower than English First Language (EFL) students irrespective of essay length and that all groups scored lower on the 15-minute essay. Comparing Essays Written Under Different Timing Conditions Wayne J. Camara Research Summary Office of Research and Development RS-08, March 2003