Analytic Scoring

Analytic scoring is a method of evaluating student work that requires assigning a separate score for each dimension of a task. Often used with performance assessment tasks, analytic scoring rubrics specify the key dimensions of a task and define student performance relative to a set of criteria across performance levels for each dimension. For example, analytic rubrics used to evaluate student essay writing often include the following dimensions: development of ideas, organization, language use, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and mechanics.

Analytic rubrics used to evaluate students’ social studies reports might include the same dimensions but also dimensions specific to social studies: use of original source material, accuracy of information, quality of source material, and correct citations. The remainder of this entry describes the uses of analytic scoring in education and then looks at the benefits and challenges of this method.

Analytic scoring is used widely in education to evaluate students’ performance in various subject [Page 90]areas (such as reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, the sciences, social studies, world languages, physical education, industrial technology, and the arts). It is also used to evaluate students studying for professional careers in various fields (such as engineering, nursing, business, and teaching). Analytic rubrics have been developed and used at all grade levels, including early childhood, elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate.

Analytic scoring is most often used when there is a need to assess how well students perform on individual dimensions of whole product or performance. Teachers, students, and/or evaluators use analytic rubrics to review the product or performance and assign ratings for each dimension, resulting in a set of subscores that can be combined to generate an overall score. Each dimension can be weighted equally or the weights on dimensions can vary, depending on the importance of each dimension to the successful accomplishment of the task. It is important to note that the relative importance of each dimension and the definition of successful performance on each dimension may vary with the specific topic or task. Thus, analytic scoring rubrics need to be customized for each performance task.

In recent years, analytic scoring has also been used to develop automated essay scoring systems. Researchers use human analytic ratings on student writing to develop automated models of the key dimensions of writing and then to test the validity of the automated models.