Return-Path: <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost.nifl.gov [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA24108; Fri, 4 Jul 1997 07:08:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 07:08:09 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <970704070720_-1126161529@emout19.mail.aol.com> Errors-To: lmann@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: MarkH38514@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: Re: readability X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Status: RO The article that Audrey is referring to is: Mailloux, S.L., Johnson, M.E., Fisher, D.G., et al (1995) How reliable is computerized assessment of readability? Computers in Nursing, 13(5), 221-225. They found in their comparison of four software programs (Corporate Voice, Grammatix (sic) IV, MS Word and RightWriter) that each gave a somewhat different estimate--the range of scores for the Flesch-Kincaid ranged from 5.6 to 7.2. The authors noted that readability formulas used in the software were provided for three of the four programs, and although the formulas were identical, the grade results were different. They concluded that "This finding is difficult to explain because if the formula (sic) were truly identical, no discrepancy should be found" (p. 224) What they don't explain is that even if the formulas were identical, the programmers for each of the four software programs still had to give the program a way of identifying and counting words and syllables. There are different ways of counting syllables, including the number of vowels per word, the number of consonants per word, or the number of letters per word. Based on the information in the article, I'm not convinced that the authors really had an in-depth understanding of the software that they were working with. If a sentence is separated by a colon or semi-colon, some programs will count it as one sentence, some as two sentences. Most readability programs calculate the number of sentences by counting periods. Consider the sentence "Research shows that 1.2% of patients are likely to suffer from angina (i.e., chest pain). There are four periods, which will calculate as four sentences (1 sentence of 4 words, one of 10 words, one of 1 word and one of 2 words). Instead of one sentence of 15 words you might get 4 sentences averaging 4.25 words/sentence. Readability users must be careful to remove periods that do not come at the end of a sentence. From a readability standpoint, the sentence should read that "Research shows that 12% of patients are likely to suffer from angina (ie, chest pain)." if it's to be counted as one sentence. This means that the user must be careful to set the options for each software program. As I've reviewed the readability literature, I can't recall a single article in which the authors described the "settings" that they used, or the strategies that they used to clean files with respect to periods, semi-colons, colons, dashes, etc. Mark Hochhauser 3344 Scott AVenue North Golden Valley, MN 55422-2748 Phone/Fax: (612) 521-4672 MarkH38514@aol.com
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