Comparison of Scoring Rationales Between Large Language Models and Human Raters

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hua, Haowei, Jiao, Hong, Song, Dan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hua, Haowei
Jiao, Hong
Song, Dan
author_facet Hua, Haowei
Jiao, Hong
Song, Dan
contents Advances in automated scoring are closely aligned with advances in machine-learning and natural-language-processing techniques. With recent progress in large language models (LLMs), the use of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other generative-AI chatbots for automated scoring has been explored. Given their strong reasoning capabilities, LLMs can also produce rationales to support the scores they assign. Thus, evaluating the rationales provided by both human and LLM raters can help improve the understanding of the reasoning that each type of rater applies when assigning a score. This study investigates the rationales of human and LLM raters to identify potential causes of scoring inconsistency. Using essays from a large-scale test, the scoring accuracy of GPT-4o, Gemini, and other LLMs is examined based on quadratic weighted kappa and normalized mutual information. Cosine similarity is used to evaluate the similarity of the rationales provided. In addition, clustering patterns in rationales are explored using principal component analysis based on the embeddings of the rationales. The findings of this study provide insights into the accuracy and ``thinking'' of LLMs in automated scoring, helping to improve the understanding of the rationales behind both human scoring and LLM-based automated scoring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_23412
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Comparison of Scoring Rationales Between Large Language Models and Human Raters
Hua, Haowei
Jiao, Hong
Song, Dan
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Advances in automated scoring are closely aligned with advances in machine-learning and natural-language-processing techniques. With recent progress in large language models (LLMs), the use of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other generative-AI chatbots for automated scoring has been explored. Given their strong reasoning capabilities, LLMs can also produce rationales to support the scores they assign. Thus, evaluating the rationales provided by both human and LLM raters can help improve the understanding of the reasoning that each type of rater applies when assigning a score. This study investigates the rationales of human and LLM raters to identify potential causes of scoring inconsistency. Using essays from a large-scale test, the scoring accuracy of GPT-4o, Gemini, and other LLMs is examined based on quadratic weighted kappa and normalized mutual information. Cosine similarity is used to evaluate the similarity of the rationales provided. In addition, clustering patterns in rationales are explored using principal component analysis based on the embeddings of the rationales. The findings of this study provide insights into the accuracy and ``thinking'' of LLMs in automated scoring, helping to improve the understanding of the rationales behind both human scoring and LLM-based automated scoring.
title Comparison of Scoring Rationales Between Large Language Models and Human Raters
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23412