Scoring Rubric for SRM II papers

The following are the criteria I use in scoring the first version of your paper. Please note that I don’t give a specific number of points for each – rather, your final score is an overall combination of them all. You’ll also note that “very exceptional” is only listed for the Intro and Discussion. These are what usually make the difference between an “A” and a “B”. Note that for an “exceptional” score you must meet all criteria, but any one of the “inadequate” criteria could result in a low grade.

Title Page

Exceptional (A or B): - Good title (accurate, not too short or too long)

- No APA style violations

Adequate (C): - Title accurately describes study

- No more than 1 minor APA style violation

Inadequate (D or E): - Can’t understand title or

- Title does not accurately represent the study or

- Major APA style violations

Abstract

Exceptional (A or B): - Same as for “adequate”, but also very easy to understand

- not too many or too few details

Adequate (C): - accurate

- 120 words or less

Inadequate (D or E): - too long (too much detail) or

- not enough detail – leave out important facts or

- inaccurate or

- incomprehensible

Introduction

Very exceptional (A): - includes everything listed for “exceptional”

- includes additional information (extra refs, knowledge from other classes, etc)

- shows the importance of our study in the grander scheme of things

Exceptional (B): - includes everything listed for “adequate”

- very easy to understand

- well organized; one paragraph follows naturally after the other

- shows how the references relate to each other

- accurately shows how the references relate to our study

Adequate (C): - 3 references cited with correct APA style

- accurately describes the studies in those references

- briefly and accurately describes the purpose of our study

Inadequate (D or E): - less than 3 references or

- inaccurately describes the 3 references or

- inaccurately (or not at all) describes the purpose of our study

Method

Exceptional (A or B): - accurately reports number of men and women

- accurately reports mean age

- accurately reports other important subject information

- accurately reports all materials

- accurately cites original authors if materials were obtained from some one else

- procedure accurately describes what we did

- procedure is easy to understand

- all sections use complete, grammatically correct sentences

Adequate (C): - leaves out no more than 1 minor detail

- procedure accurate and reasonably easy to understand

Inadequate (D or E): - leaves out several small details or one important detail or

- inaccurately describes what we did

Results

Exceptional (A or B): - everything listed under “adequate”

- everything reported with correct APA style

Adequate (C): - accurately reports all required statistics

- accurately reports all necessary numbers (e.g. means)

- accurately states whether differences are statistically significant

- no more than 1 minor violation of APA style

- refers to the Figure

Inadequate (D or E): - incorrectly reports significance of stats or

- incorrect stats or

- incorrect means

Discussion

Very exceptional (A): - everything listed for “adequate”, plus

- extended discussion of how results relate to previous studies

- discusses the importance of the results beyond the lab

- discusses possible drawbacks of the study

- good suggestions for possible future research

Exceptional (B): - everything listed below for “adequate”

- some, but not all, of the things listed above for “very exceptional”

Adequate (C): - accurately describes the results

- attempts to relate our results to previous studies

Inadequate (D or E): - inaccurately describes results or

- says nothing beyond what was said previously or

- no attempt to make any meaning out of results

References

Exceptional (A or B): - everything included

- correct APA style

Adequate (C): - everything included

- only minor APA style violations

Inadequate (D or E): - something left out or

- multiple APA style violations

Figure Caption

Exceptional (A or B): - everything listed for “adequate” plus

- very well worded – not too short or too long

Adequate (C): - correct information (dep and indep variables), but difficult to understand

Inadequate (D or E): - missing or

- inaccurately describes figure

Figure

Exceptional (A or B): - everything listed for “adequate”

- no APA style violations

Adequate (C): - accurate numbers

- accurate labels for axes

- no more than 1 minor APA style violation

Inadequate (D or E): - missing or

- wrong numbers or

- wrong axis labels

Overall

Very exceptional (A): - everything listed for “exceptional” plus

- something additional, especially in Intro or Discussion

Exceptional (B): - includes all required information

- correct grammar and spelling

- correct APA style

- easy to understand

Adequate (C): - includes all required information (except possible minor details)

- no more than 1 misspelled word

- no more than a couple minor APA style violations

- understandable

Inadequate (D or E): - something important left out or

- poor grammar or

- multiple misspelled words or

- inaccurate information or

- very difficult to understand or

- multiple violations of APA style