Abstract

This study concerns two related issues pertaining to the evaluation of students' written compositions: the relative effects of content versus mechanics on judgments of quality, and the extent to which raters are able to follow instructions directing them to attend more to one aspect of writing than to another. A college-level expository essay was made weaker in content (by reducing the number of underlying propositions) and in mechanics. The original and altered versions were rated analytically and holistically according to different sets of rating instructions. Analysis of variance indicated that mechanics had a greater influence on raters' judgments than either content or rating instructions. Thus the results suggest that evaluators may not be able to focus on individual criteria of writing quality.