GROUP COMPARISONS FOR THE TEST OF STANDARD WRITTEN ENGLISH

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Abstract
Group comparisons for male, female, majority, and minority students were conducted for the Test of Standard Written English (TSWE). Data for two academic years and from 18 different institutions were analyzed by pooling data across institutions within each of the academic years. Analyses of data from the first academic year focused on relationships between TSWE scores and grades. Analyses of the second academic year focused on relationships between TSWE scores and scores on graded writing samples. No important group differences in traditional correlational analyses for either grade or essay prediction were observed. No important group differences were observed in either correlational analyses or regression analyses of the second year essay data. Analyses of correct and incorrect placement decisions (hits and misses) at specific TSWE cut‐off scores revealed no noteworthy group differences whether outcomes were based on English course grades or on freshman year writing performance. Whether grades or essays were used as the outcome, the proportion of incorrect decisions (misses) was less for minority students than for any of the groups. For all groups, the TSWE appeared to predict freshman year writing performance as well as or better than pre‐course writing samples, high school English grades, or high school rank in class.

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