Are There Gender Differences in How Students Write Their Essays? An Analysis of Writing Processes

This study compared gender groups on the processes used in writing essays in an online assessment. Middle‐school students from four grades responded to essays in two persuasive subgenres, argumentation and policy recommendation. Writing processes were inferred from four indicators extracted from stu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Educational measurement, issues and practice issues and practice, 2019-06, Vol.38 (2), p.14-26
Main Authors: Zhang, Mo, Bennett, Randy E., Deane, Paul, Rijn, Peter W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer Assisted Testing
Connected Discourse
Editing
Educational tests & measurements
Essays
Gender Differences
Keyboarding (Data Entry)
Middle School Students
Persuasive Discourse
problem‐solving processes
Recordkeeping
scenario‐based assessment
Scores
Student writing
writing
Writing Evaluation
Writing Processes
Writing Skills
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Summary:This study compared gender groups on the processes used in writing essays in an online assessment. Middle‐school students from four grades responded to essays in two persuasive subgenres, argumentation and policy recommendation. Writing processes were inferred from four indicators extracted from students’ keystroke logs. In comparison to males, on average females not only obtained higher essay scores but differed from males in their writing processes. Females entered text more fluently, engaged in more macro and local editing, and showed less need to pause at locations associated with planning (e.g., between bursts of text, at sentence boundaries). That these differences were detected after controlling for essay scores suggests that they cannot be attributed solely to disparities in group writing skill.
ISSN:0731-1745
1745-3992
DOI:10.1111/emip.12249