Beyond literacy and competency – The effects of raters’ perceived uncertainty on assessment of writing

This study investigated how common raters’ experiences of uncertainty in high-stakes testing are before, during, and after the rating of writing performances, what these feelings of uncertainty are, and what reasons might underlie such feelings. We also examined if uncertainty was related to raters’ rating experience or to the quality of their ratings. The data were gathered from the writing raters (n = 23) in the Finnish National Certificates of Proficiency, a standardized Finnish high-stakes language examination. The data comprise 12,118 ratings as well as raters’ survey responses and notes during rating sessions. The responses were analyzed by using thematic content analysis and the ratings by descriptive statistics and Many-Facets Rasch analyses. The results show that uncertainty is variable and individual, and that even highly experienced raters can feel unsure about (some of) their ratings. However, uncertainty was not related to rating quality (consistency or severity/leniency). Nor did uncertainty diminish with growing experience. Uncertainty during actual ratings was typically associated with the characteristics of the rated performances but also with other, more general and rater-related or situational factors. Other reasons external to the rating session were also identified for uncertainty, such as those related to the raters themselves. An analysis of the double-rated performances shows that although similar performance-related reasons seemed to cause uncertainty for different raters, their uncertainty was largely associated with different test-takers’ performances. While uncertainty can be seen as a natural part of holistic ratings in high-stakes tests, the study shows that even if uncertainty is not associated with the quality of ratings, we should constantly seek ways to address uncertainty in language testing, for example by developing rating scales and rater training. This may make raters’ work easier and less burdensome.