An ex post facto study was conducted to test for differences in the quality of university student writing as reflected in early writing (by first or second year students) and later writing (third or final year). The study was based on a sample of 30 undergraduate portfolios, which contained a range of writing samples across the college years. Two rubrics, the holistic measure and a deep-and-surface measure, were used to evaluate writing samples. Additionally, the relationship of writing quality to a traditional performance measure was investigated. Results support moderate relationships between the deep- and surface-evaluation and the holistic evaluation. There were no significant differences in the quality of writing between early and late samples, and no significant relationships between Grade Point Average (GPA) and writing quality. Implications include suggestions for curricular and instructional change, as well as directions for further research.
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Ellen Lavelle (2003) studied this question.