RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ESSAY TESTS AND OBJECTIVE TESTS OF LANGUAGE SKILLS FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

Interest in the relationship between essay tests and objective tests has been a persistent one in educational measurement. Research on this relationship may be divided into two broad categories. First, there are those studies which compare the relative effectiveness of the essay and the objective tests as measures of knowledge of content, such as science, history, etc. Coffman's (1971) excellent review of the literature concentrates primarily, although not exclusively, on this area. Second, there are those studies which compare essays and objective tests as measures of writing skill. While a substantial amount of research has been devoted to this latter issue, significant questions have yet to be answered-or even raised-and the questions are becoming more critical in light of demands for competency testing and criticisms of all objective tests used to assess writing skill (see, for example, National Council of Teachers of English, 1975). Research has been particularly scarce below the college entrance level. Traditionally, most research regarding essays versus objective tests as measures of writing skill has been related to college selection and/or placement and, hence, has dealt with the higher developmental levels of writing skill. For a large sample of college freshmen, Breland and Gaynor (1979) report correlations between single essays and single scores on the objective (multiplechoice) Test of Standard Written English of .56-.63; see also Breland (1977). The widely cited study by Godshalk, Swineford, and Coffman (1966), using a largely college-bound group of high school juniors and seniors reported correlations generally in the .30's between several objective measures and single essays rated by two or three readers. But correlations of .57 to .71 were obtained between objective measures and an elaborately constructed essay score (four writing samples, each scored by five readers). Major attempts to measure writing skill at younger ages, specifically at ages 9 and 13, have been made by National Assessment of Educational Progress (1972, 1975). However, because of the special nature of the NAEP effort, no correlations between essay-type and objective-type measures of writing skill have been reported from this