Contents 1 Introduction
When giving an essay test, the examiner expects a written essay to reflect the writing ability of the examinee. A variety of factors, however, can affect scores in a complicated manner. Most of the factors are present in giving tests, and the human “rater,” in particular, is a major error factor in the scoring of essays. In fact, there are many other factors that influence the scoring of essay tests as listed below, and much research has been devoted to them.
Handwriting skill (handwriting quality, spelling)
Serial effects of rating (the order in which essay answers are rated)
Topic selection (how should essays written on different topics be rated?)
Other error factors (write's gender, ethnic group, etc.)
