In a collaborative effort, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Document Design Project conducted an evaluation of marine radio rules for recreational boaters that had been rewritten in plain English by FCC personnel. The revised rules were evaluated by 53 experienced boaters and 52 inexperienced boaters, who were given either the…

Although the popular press has reported that college textbooks are becoming easier to read in response to the lowered reading skill level of entering freshmen, a recent study found that newer editions of college texts were more difficult to read than earlier editions of the same texts. A study was undertaken to determine which of the two views was…

Thirty-two fourth grade students were divided into two equal-sized groups according to reading ability. Each student read and recalled four passages from fourth-grade texts. The passages were either an original version, a semantic simplification, a syntactic simplification, or a combined rewrite. One week later, each child read and recalled…

This paper suggests that teachers concentrate on the ideational and structural properties of text rather than on information acquired from readability formulas when selecting and using texts. Emphasis is given to the importance of context in the analysis of text, and a framework is suggested for examining the text considering the functions texts…

Forty adults served as subjects in a study of the comprehensibility of instructions conditioned by multicategory compounds, such as "If you are male, or both married and not employed, go to question 3." The stimulus materials were 96 sentence frames of the form, "If you are X, press (button) Y," in which "X" was…

After reiterating the findings of an earlier examination of job literacy, this paper discusses the results of a job literacy survey involving interviews with 107 individuals representing 100 occupations ranging from short-order cooks and assembly-line workers to lawyers and corporation vice-presidents. Other aspects of the research findings…

Several studies on the use of the cloze procedure as a measure of readability and of comprehension are reviewed. These studies showed (1) that the cloze procedure proved a more reliable measure of readability for nonstandard reading materials than the commonly used readability formulas, (2) that cloze tests are valid and reliable predictors of the…

Horizontal readability, the analysis of essentially similar passages through classification of words and phrases according to their cognitive similarity, is discussed in relation to its usefulness in differentiating among materials designed for the same reading level. Three studies of horizontal readability in which passages were rated for high…

A statistical comparison was made between two automated devices which were used to count data points (words, sentences, and syllables) needed in the Flesch Reading Ease Score to determine the reading grade level of written material. Determination of grade level of all Rate Training Manuals and Non-Resident Career Courses had been requested by the…

The relationship between the reading abilities of 215 freshman composition students and the readability of their college textbooks was studied. Measures from the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the Dale-Chall Readability Formula were used to assess the relationship between reading ability and the readability of the textbooks. Results indicated that…

A written examination may discriminate against candidates if the reading difficulty level of the test is higher than the minimum educational level required for entry into the position for which the examination is used as a screening device. Tests used for examining applicants for positions in a large heterogeneous merit jurisdiction and in a city…

The research reported in this project focuses on the effective development, evaluation and individualization of programed materials. The study involved three phases. Phase I was to determine which of four programing methods was most effective for the attainment of science achievement at three levels, knowledge, application, and relationship.…

The use of exact-length blanks in cloze tests of reading comprehension was investigated. Subjects were indigenous primary-school pupils in New Guinea for whom English was a foreign language. No significant difference was found between the mean scores of subjects on cloze tests using blanks of a uniform length and the mean scores of subjects on…

The purpose of this study was to describe the differences in reading interests expressed by college students and prisoners. Two forms of fixed-alternative response surveys based on specific reading categories of presumed interest to young males were developed. The short form consisted of fifteen named categories ranging from social problems like…

This report describes how to apply techniques that have been used in measuring the readability/comprehensibility and reading level of textural materials. A review of available readability/comprehensibility measurement techniques and of previous experimental studies into methods for developing such techniques is presented. As a result of this…