Assessing the Writing Achievement ofYoung Struggling Writers: Application ofGeneralizability Theory
This study examined the number of writing samples needed to obtain a reliable estimate of young struggling writers' capabilities. It further assessed if performance in one genre was reflective of performance in other genres for these children. Second and third grade students (81 boys, 56 girls) who were identified as struggling writers in need of special assistance by their teacher and scored at the 25th percentile or lower on a norm referenced story writing test, wrote four compositions: a story, personal narrative, opinion essay, and informative text. Applying generalizability theory (G theory) students' scores on three writing measures (total number of words [TNW] vocabulary diversity, and writing quality) for the four compositions were each portioned into variance due to the following sources: students, writing tasks, and the interaction between students and writing tasks. We found that 14, 8, and 11 compositions, respectively, would be needed to obtain a reliable estimate of these students' writi.