The ARWN study
A five-session study of how adolescents experience, develop, and find meaning in their writing. This page walks through exactly what happens at each step, so there are no surprises.
Across five in-person sessions, you'll take part in reflective interviews, complete questionnaires at home, and do short assessments with us. Each session is conversational and centred on your experience as a writer.
What to expect, session by session
Select a session to see what's involved.
Recruitment and first meeting
Screening questionnaire
A parent or guardian completes a short screening form to confirm eligibility for the study.
Introductory meeting
We sit down with you and your parent or guardian to walk through the whole study, answer questions, and complete consent forms. We'll also cover everything that needs to be done before Session 1.
Exploring writing through your eyes
Before this session
- Social Responsiveness Scale, 2nd ed. (SRS-2) — from parent
- Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, 3rd ed. (Vineland-3) — parent form
- Comprehensive Autistic Trait Inventory (CATI) — from participant
- Upload and bring an example of good writing
Cognitive and achievement measures
- Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test, 2nd ed. (KBIT-2)
- Woodcock-Johnson V — sentence writing fluency, decoding, and reading fluency
- Typing and handwriting fluency via one-minute sentence copying
Exploring writing through your eyes
This opening interview builds rapport and explores your relationship with writing. You'll share the writing sample you brought, discuss why you chose it, and reflect on your feelings, motivations, and experiences around writing. The session closes with a short video on writing communities to set the stage for later conversations.
Exploring notions of "good writing"
Before this session
- Monotropism questionnaire
- Writing engagement surveys (E-EAWAQ, E-PDWTQ, E-SPWW) — from participant
Reading and writing measures
- Test of Word Reading Efficiency, 2nd ed. (TOWRE-2)
- Test of Written Language, 4th ed. (TOWL-4; Form A, handwritten) — all subtests
Exploring notions of "good writing"
You'll reflect on what "good writing" means to you in different contexts: your motivations, internal and external influences, how your definitions of quality shift with audience or purpose, your experience with tools like AI, and your ideal writing conditions.
Learning to write
Before this session
- Writing Motivation Questionnaire (WMQ) — from participant
- Writing Tools Questionnaire — from participant
- School-age writing experiences worksheet
Language and creative writing
- Creative writing task 1
- Woodcock-Johnson V — picture vocabulary, oral comprehension, oral language samples, story comprehension, sentence repetition
Learning to write
Using a developmental timeline from early childhood through high school, you'll trace how your writing has grown over time — key learning moments, helpful and unhelpful supports, and the bright spots in your writing instruction at home and school.
Writing communities
Before this session
- Conners questionnaire
- Sensory subscales of the writing engagement survey — from participant
Writing and cognitive measures
- Test of Written Language, 4th ed. (TOWL-4; Form B, typed)
- Cognitive Assessment Battery (CAB)
Writing communities
Starting with a short video, you'll explore your experiences in writing communities at school and beyond — collaborative writing, tools, strategies, social dynamics, online groups, peer chats, and creative circles — and how emotions, identity, environment, and social supports shape your writing.
Revisiting and expanding writing reflections
Before this session
- Marsh's Self-Concept Scale (1992, adapted) — from participant
- Strengths Questionnaire (adapted from Bellier, 2015) — from participant
Creative writing
Creative writing task 2
Revisiting and expanding writing reflections
In this closing session, you'll return to your writing sample from Interview 1 and consider whether your view of it has shifted. You'll reflect on purpose, process, and emotional impact, then share a new sample and compare the two pieces — what has changed in your approach, your identity, and your growth as a writer over the study.
