An examination of summary writing as a measure of reading comprehension

This study investigated the effects of topic interest, writing ability, and summarization training on seventh‐grade subjects’ ability to summarize a social studies text. In addition, subjects’ performance on a multiple‐choice text was examined in relation to their summaries. These effects were then considered for their concomitant effect on the issue of using summaries to measure reading comprehension. Results indicated that multiple‐choice and summarization measures shared very little overlap in the kinds of text comprehension that they assessed. Additionally, it appeared that each of the three factors investigated had some degree of influence on summarization scores. Recommendations for future research are presented.