The Computerized Inventory of Developmental Writing Traits (CIDWT) is meant to provide a valid reliable measure of program improvement, particularly for teachers implementing a process writing approach in their classrooms. While standardized tests, portfolio, and holistic scoring all have something to offer, the CIDWT is an inexpensive direct performance assessment instrument which yields normed aggregatable data. The CIDWT, developed by a research team from the Alaska Writing Program, combines traditional numeric count research and computer based research; it is a MS-DOS computer program that counts and analyzes targeted numeric indicators in text files. Reliability and validity studies indicated that: the same four factors emerged in all studies (fluency, sentence development, word choice, and paragraph development); the CIDWT correlates well with teacher ratings; all factors and correlations were as strong or stronger for elementary students as for college students; and the CIDWT measures the development of writing traits. The next step in the research process is to collect a large national sample of student writing and combine that with the CIDWT results into a national database. (Contains 17 references.) (RS)