Differences in Middle School TCAP Writing Assessment Scores Based on Keyboarding Skill

Carol A Parker, Tennessee State University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in the writing assessment scores for each of the four traits—development, focus and organization, language, and conventions—as measured by the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) of students who had a formal keyboarding course compared to those who did not. A quantitative research design was utilized for this study. More specifically, a causal-comparative ex post facto research method was used since the research intended to establish a cause-effect relationship between data that were collected after the fact (Johnson, 2001). The population of this study consisted of students from one suburban middle school in a middle Tennessee county during the 2014–2015 school year who received a score on at least one essay of the TCAP writing assessment. Essay 1 consisted of 916 participants and Essay 2 consisted of 906 participants. The number of participants varied between essays due to 10 special education students who only responded to Essay 1. The dependent variables in this study were the 2014–2015 TCAP writing assessment scores for each of the four traits of all students in the middle school. The independent variable was formal keyboarding instruction, which was scheduled at this middle school as a 9-week exploratory course. Data were analyzed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 22 using the chi-square Pearson’s test for all research questions. The chi-square test was selected since the research aimed to determine if there was a significant difference between two or more categorical variables from a single population. The test value for alpha (∞) was at the .05 level of significance for each null hypothesis. For every null hypothesis, the p value was greater than .05 for each grade level as well as the total of all grades. The chi-square test results showed that there was no dependency between test scores and a keyboarding course. These results mean that there was no statistically significant difference in the TCAP writing assessment scores for each of the four traits—development, focus and organization, language, and conventions—for Essay 1 or Essay 2 of students who had a formal keyboarding course compared to those who did not.

Subject Area

Educational tests & measurements|Educational leadership|Educational technology

Recommended Citation

Carol A Parker, "Differences in Middle School TCAP Writing Assessment Scores Based on Keyboarding Skill" (2016). ETD Collection for Tennessee State University. Paper AAI10119078.
https://digitalscholarship.tnstate.edu/dissertations/AAI10119078

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