Investigating direct and indirect relationships between writing self‐efficacy, integrative processing and integrated understanding in a multiple‐document context

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BackgroundA common approach to assessing students' integrated understanding of multiple documents is to analyse their post‐reading written reports. This study investigated to what extent writing self‐efficacy directly and indirectly (via integrative processing) contributed to multiple‐document comprehension as assessed with an integrative writing task.MethodsA sample of Norwegian university students (n = 67) read four documents on a controversial socio‐scientific issue and afterwards wrote reports on the issue without access to the documents. Multiple‐document comprehension was assessed in terms of how well the reports reflected an elaborated and integrated understanding of the four documents' content. A mediation analysis was conducted with students' working memory as a covariate, their confidence in their ability to write a text that integrated content from multiple source documents as a predictor, self‐reports of their integrative processing during reading as a mediator and multiple‐document comprehension as an outcome variable.ResultsThere was an indirect relationship between multiple‐document‐based writing self‐efficacy and multiple‐document comprehension via integrative processing. However, no direct relationship between writing self‐efficacy and multiple‐document comprehension was found. The covariate of working memory uniquely adjusted students' multiple‐document comprehension.ConclusionsIn the context of written assessment of multiple‐document comprehension, multiple‐document‐based writing self‐efficacy and multiple‐document comprehension were indirectly related via integrative processing during reading. The results indicate that not only reading‐related but also writing‐related individual differences may come into play when multiple‐document comprehension is assessed with an integrative writing task.