Sample Grading Rubric for Labs
by Jonathan Vaughan
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laboratory reports in Psychology
NAME ______________________
Each criterion gets up to 10 points (80 points total).
Grading rubric:
____ Content [Does the writing flow clearly and logically, touching on all the necessary major points, developing coherent arguments and exposition?]
____ Style [Is the writing free of spelling and grammatical errors, with clear transitions from one topic to another, etc.]
____ APA* Style [Are all the formalities followed in the formatting of the main text and the references?]
____ Experiment design (or topic choice, if relevant) [Does the design of the experiment make it possible to draw unambiguous conclusions from the data, or are there experimental confounds that need to be addressed?]
____ Experiment (or topic) description [Are the motivation for the study (introduction), the methods used, and the results clearly spelled out?]
____ Results description [Are the direction and magnitude of all effects clearly described, and well integrated with the statistical support?]
____ References cited [Are they connected to the purpose and goals of your study? Are most of them “fresh”, that is not taken directly from our class reading, or encountered in the work of other students? Are all the references primary references (works you have personally read, not just read about in some other source)?]
___ Reference discussion [Does the description of each study discussed clearly follow the HMRDS** format? Is enough information presented to permit evaluation of the study? Is the relation between the cited work and your own study made clear in the introduction and discussion?]
____ total out of 80 points
* APA style is our discipline’s conventional organization and formatting principles. We follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition. Also see Madigan, R., Johnson, S., & Linton, P. (1995). The language of psychology: APA style as epistemology. American Psychologist, 50, 428-436.
** The HMRDS format is: Discuss the Hypotheses, Methods, Results, Discussion (Interpretation) and Source of each of the articles noted in the Introduction and Discussion of your paper.
Jonathan Vaughan, Psychology Department
Hamilton College
January 25, 2010
