Return-Path: <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h4PFRNC24060; Sun, 25 May 2003 11:27:23 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 11:27:23 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <BCEBLBJELLCPMGHDEFMMKEPICAAA.lmcintosh@attbi.com> Errors-To: listowner@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: "Linda McIntosh" <lmcintosh@attbi.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-health@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-HEALTH:3996] Re: Readability Testing X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 4180 Lines: 74 I understand that Flesch-Kincaid in MS/ Word isn't perfect. But at my organization we have a policy requiring that patient education materials submitted for translation must be at a 6th grade or lower reading level in English before they can be sent for translation. The translation coordinator may get 5-10 documents in a day and realistically he can't hand score them all. But he can test them on-line. When he finds a score above 6.8 (and it's usually 8-10th grade) or so, he send it to me for "English-to-English" translation. I bring the level down and make the document more user-friendly. While I have taught several others the basics of rewriting for easy to read, I am the main rewrite resource. SAM is terrific and a goal. But I can't really do it for all materials because of time constraints and volume. How do other people handle this? I am so delighted to get the organizational buy-in to make things easy to read. I feel like it is a whole other battle to hold out for testing suitability for every individual piece unless/ until we have resources to offer to improve materials. For whole clumps of materials (e.g., for diabetes and for asthma self-management), we can do SAM assessments. In practice, I don't care so much that the on-line Flesch-Kincaid testing max's out at 12th grade. I do care that we are able to do a quick screen and have a number that we can show to the writers. It may not be a "real" number but it does allow me to improve things that otherwise I wouldn't have access to. Linda McIntosh, APRN, Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge MA -----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of MarkH38514@aol.com Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 5:13 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: [NIFL-HEALTH:3981] Re: Readability Testing Readability formulas are often a matter of personal preference. Beware of the Flesch-Kincaid in Microsoft Word-it only scores up to grade 12. That's not the formula's fault-it's the fault of Microsoft programmers who converted the formula into a software program. It's a flaw that Microsoft has never acknowledged or fixed, even though several readability researchers have contacted Microsoft about it. I believe that any research relying on the Flesch-Kincaid in Microsoft Word-and there is a lot of it-may come to the wrong conclusions. Do not rely exclusively on readability formulas. They can be helpful, but don't try to "write to the formula" just to get a lower grade level. Evaluate materials using the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) developed by Doak, Doak, and Root in their 1996 book "Teaching Patients With Low Literacy Skills." Or consider using the cloze procedure to see how well people understand a document. The cloze involves deleting every fifth word, and asking readers to fill-in-the-blank. Sixty to 80% correct means that the document is OK, 40% - 60% correct means that the document needs better explanations, and 0% - 40% correct means that readers don't understand the document. It should be reviewed and rewritten. If you want to find out if people can understand a piece of writing, you have to test it on a representative sample of readers. Readability formulas will give you a rough estimate of how difficult the material is to understand, but the grade levels should not be taken too seriously. After all, some of these formulas were developed 30-60 years ago, and both reading skills and reading materials have changed. I don't know what it really means if something scores at a 10th grade reading level-based on 10th grade reading skills in the 1950s. I've used readability formulas extensively in my consulting, but I always recommend other ways of evaluating written materials. Plus, depending on what you're writing and who the audience is, I always look at things like the number of words in a document, average sentence length, word commonness, etc. as ways of giving my some ideas about information overload, working memory limits, cognitive complexity, etc. Mark Hochhauser For more information: Mark Hochhauser, Ph.D. Readability Consultant 3344 Scott Avenue North Golden Valley, MN 55422 Phone: (763) 521-4672 Fax: (763) 521-5069 E-mail: MarkH38514@aol.com
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