SAT® Writing: An Overview of Research and Psychometrics to Date

In March 2005, the College Board introduced a revised SAT® that included a writing section and discontinued use of the SAT Subject Test in Writing. To date, well over two million students have taken the new SAT, and this paper examines research and statistical results from the new writing section. The writing section is composed of multiple-choice questions and an essay. Each form of the SAT includes a 25-minute and a 10-minute writing multiple-choice section, and a 25-minute essay. The 49 multiple-choice items are combined to produce a scaled writing subscore from 20 to 80. The essay is scored by two trained readers on a 1–6 scale; those scores are combined to produce a raw subscore of 2–12 (students can receive a score of zero under special circumstances described below). If two readers disagree by more than 1 point, the essay is sent to an expert reader to determine the final score on the 1–6 scale and this is doubled to produce a 2–12 raw subscore. The multiple-choice and essay subscores are combined to form a total score for the writing section on the 200–800 scale.