Readability is in the Mind of the Reader

A student lab experiment was conducted in which eighty-nine subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. The subjects received either a Code reading or a Commentary reading. The subjects answered fifteen questions about the reading and rated the complexity of the reading onfive d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of business communication (1973) 1983-10, Vol.20 (4), p.57-69
Main Authors: Karlinsky, Stewart S., Koch, Bruce S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Communication
Experiments
Income taxes
Indexes
Rating Scales
Reaction Time
Readability
Readability Formulas
Test methods
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:A student lab experiment was conducted in which eighty-nine subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. The subjects received either a Code reading or a Commentary reading. The subjects answered fifteen questions about the reading and rated the complexity of the reading onfive dimensions. The subjects assigned to the Code reading had significantlyfewer correct responses and took significantly longer to answer the experimental questions than subjects assigned to the Commentary reading. Also, the Code reading was perceived by the subjects to be significantly more complex than the Commentary reading. These experimental results are in contrast to the Flesch Readability Formula and Gunning Fog Index readability level of the two passages, which showed the two presentation styles (code/legal and commentary/prose) to be of approximate equal difficulty.
ISSN:0021-9436
2329-4884
1552-4582
2329-4892
DOI:10.1177/002194368302000409