A Methodologically Improved Study on Raters’ Personality and Rating Severity in Writing Assessment

Abstract

Personality is an inherent rater’s characteristic influencing rating severity, but very few studies examined their relationship and the findings were inconclusive. This study aimed to re-investigate the relationship between raters’ personality and rating severity with more control on relevant variables and more reliable analysis of rating severity. Female novice raters ( n = 28) from a demographically homogeneous background were recruited to rate on two occasions essays written by 111 students in an intermediate-level Chinese as a foreign language program. Raters’ personality traits were measured using the complete version of NEO-PI-R. Many-faceted Rasch measurement model and repeated measurement were applied to yield more robust estimates of rating severity. In addition, rating order effect was carefully controlled. Extroversion was found to be positively correlated with severity, r(26) = .495, p = .010. Furthermore, Extroversion was found to be a valid predictor of severity, t(24) = 2.792, p = .010, R2 = .21, Cohen’s d = .77, Hattie’s r = .37. Practical implications for developing more individualized online rater calibration for large-scale writing assessments were discussed, followed by limitations of the present study.