Assessing the Writing of Deaf College Students: Reevaluating a Direct Assessment of Writing

Abstract

The NTID Writing Test was developed to assess the writing ability of postsecondary deaf students entering the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and to determine their appropriate placement into developmental writing courses. While previous research (Albertini et al., 1986; Albertini et al., 1996; Bochner, Albertini, Samar, & Metz, 1992) has shown the test to be reliable between multiple test raters and as a valid measure of writing ability for placement into these courses, changes in curriculum and the rater pool necessitated a new look at interrater reliability and concurrent validity. We evaluated the rating scores for 236 samples from students who entered the college during the fall 2001. Using a multiprong approach, we confirmed the interrater reliability and the validity of this direct measure of assessment. The implications of continued use of this and similar tests in light of definitions of validity, local control, and the nature of writing are discussed.

Reading, Writing, and Phonological Processing Skills of Adolescents With 10 or More Years of Cochlear Implant Experience

“…Both the original written version and the typed version were sent to experienced raters who were faculty members in the English department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) for scoring. The scoring procedure was developed for assessing the writing ability of postsecondary deaf students (Schley & Albertini, 2005). Each essay was evaluated by three raters.…”

“…Reliability was assessed for triads of raters who evaluated 236 essays from students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (Schley & Albertini, 2005). Pearson correlations among pairs of raters were all above .81.…”

Framework for Conducting and Writing a Synthetic Literature Review

“…ISSN 1948-5476 2018 As an example, Strassman and Schirmer (2013) were interested in whether approaches to writing instruction with deaf students were similar to approaches used with hearing students. Prior research had found that the texts typically produced by deaf students are comprehensible but lacking in organization and supporting detail, choppy, and immature (e.g., Albertini & Schley, 2011;Antia, Reed, & Kreimeyer, 2005;Mayer, 2010;Paul, 2008) and that many deaf students are placed in writing remediation classes when they enter college (Schley & Albertini, 2005). These findings from the research on the writing development and achievement of deaf students suggested why it was important to determine whether research offered evidence for the effectiveness of instructional approaches that might improve these outcomes.…”

The Assessment of Written Phrasal Constructs and Grammar of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students with Varying Expressive Language Abilities

“…Although there is a small corpus of research suggesting that the linguistic proficiency of d/hh students may influence the unique characteristics found in their writing [13,18], there are only a few assessment options that specifically target written composition reported in the literature. Normreferenced standardized tests are often used to assess the writing skills of d/hh students [26]; however, the practice of evaluating the writing outcomes of d/hh students by these standardized assessments alone has been criticized, as they may not capture the unique strengths, weaknesses, and characteristics of d/hh students' writing [27].…”