| | SOLO score | SOLO level descriptor |
| | (0) No answer | No answer, or there are written words, but not relevant to the question |
| | (1) Prestructural | Here students do not have any kind of understanding but use irrelevant information and/or miss the point altogether. Scattered pieces of information may have been acquired, but they are unorganized, unstructured, and essentially void of actual content or relation to a topic or problem |
| | (2) Unistructural | Students can deal with one single aspect and make obvious connections. Students can use terminology, recite (remember things), identify names, and so forth |
| | (3) Multistructural | At this level students can deal with several aspects but these are considered independently and not in connection. Metaphorically speaking, the students see the many trees, but not the forest. They are able to enumerate, describe, classify, combine, apply methods, structure, execute procedures, and so forth |
| | (4) Relational | At level four, students may understand relations between several aspects and how they might fit together to form a whole. The understanding forms a structure. They may thus have the competence to compare, relate, analyze, apply theory, explain in terms of cause and effect, and so forth |
| | (5) Extended abstract | At this level, which is the highest, students may generalize structure beyond what was given, may perceive structure from many different perspectives, and transfer ideas to new areas. They may have the competence to generalize, hypothesize, criticize, theorize, and so forth |
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