Global Ratings of Essays About Trauma: Development of the GREAT Code, and Correlations with Physical and Mental Health Outcomes

ABSTRACT Past research has demonstrated in a variety of contexts that writing about emotional topics can benefit physical health and general well being. Most of this prior research has used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (LIWC, Pennebaker & Francis, 1996), but not global essay ratings, to assess what aspects of written essays might be associated with such benefits. Yet scoring rubrics are commonly used in the field of education to score global aspects of student writing. The current study used a sub-sample of essays from a larger research project on trauma, writing and health to develop a global rating rubric for essays about trauma based on rubrics used in education. The resulting rubric was reliably applied to participants' essays about trauma. Global ratings of essay organization were correlated with improvements in physical and mental health measures at a six-month follow-up. Properties of the rubric and correlations with outcome measures are discussed.