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Adult literacy in 1937. This study confirmed the relationship between reading skill and years of education completed. Sources: Buswell, G. 1937 pp. 27, 57, 71).
Source publication
A brief introduction to the research on readability (reading ease) and the readability formulas. Readability is tightly related to reading comprehension, retention, reading speed, and persistence. The readability formulas use variables that are known to be among the first causes of reading difficulty. While there are many other features of language...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... we look at the methods of these experiments, difficulties appear that explain their inconsistent results. In their report, Duffy and Kabance provide four sample passages used in the study. The re-written passages appear disjointed and stilted, not what one would expect of a 5 th -grade text (See Fig. 11). If these studies are representative of the other passages, we must assume that judges were not used to control for the coherence and content of the ...
Context 2
... (1969) later extended the graph to primary levels. In 1977, he extended it through the college years ( Fig. 11). Although vocabulary continues to increase during college years, reading ability varies much, depending on both individuals and the subjects taught. That means that a text with a score of 16 will be more difficult than one with a score of 14. It does not mean, however, that one is appropriate for all seniors and the other for all ...
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Citations
... Readability refers to "the ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing" (Klare, 1963), which can be derived by readability formulas with various purposes and settings (DuBay, 2004). Reading ease is the determinant of whether receivers process a debunking message with the central route. ...
Background
In the face of the proliferation of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, crowdsourced debunking has surfaced as a counter-infodemic measure to complement efforts from professionals and regular individuals. In 2021, X (formerly Twitter) initiated its community-driven fact-checking program, named Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch). This program allows users to create contextual and corrective notes for misleading posts and rate the helpfulness of others' contributions. The effectiveness of the platform has been preliminarily verified, but mixed findings on reliability indicate the need for further research.
Objective
The study aims to assess the reliability of Community Notes by comparing the readability and language neutrality of helpful and unhelpful notes.
Methods
A total of 7,705 helpful notes and 2,091 unhelpful notes spanning from January 20, 2021, to May 30, 2023 were collected. Measures of reading ease, analytical thinking, affect and authenticity were derived by means of Wordless and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Subsequently, the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U-test was employed to evaluate the differences between the helpful and unhelpful groups.
Results
Both groups of notes are easy to read with no notable difference. Helpful notes show significantly greater logical thinking, authenticity, and emotional restraint than unhelpful ones. As such, the reliability of Community Notes is validated in terms of readability and neutrality. Nevertheless, the prevalence of prepared, negative and swear language in unhelpful notes indicates the manipulative and abusive attempts on the platform. The wide value range in the unhelpful group and overall limited consensus on note helpfulness also suggest the complex information ecology within the crowdsourced platform, highlighting the necessity of further guidance and management.
Conclusion
Based on the statistical analysis of the linguistic and psycholinguistic characteristics, the study validated the reliability of Community Notes and identified room for improvement. Future endeavors could explore the psychological motivations underlying volunteering, gaming, or even manipulative behaviors, enhance the crowdsourced debunking system and integrate it with broader efforts in infodemic management.
... Porém, em relação às demonstrações contábeis, existe uma dificuldade na construção textual, que implica no entendimento pelos usuários (Moreno;Casasola, 2016) e no desempenho das empresas (Smith;Taffler, 1992). Dubay (2004) afirma que a legibilidade é facilitada quando o texto possui elementos como frases curtas, simples e familiares, gramática, pontuação e ortografia corretas e aspectos gráficos que auxiliam para que as informações sejam visualmente acessíveis. Dessa forma, ao longo do século XX diversos pesquisadores desenvolveram métodos para medir a legibilidade de um texto, mostrando em que medida sua compreensão é simples ou complexa (Dubay, 2004). ...
... Dubay (2004) afirma que a legibilidade é facilitada quando o texto possui elementos como frases curtas, simples e familiares, gramática, pontuação e ortografia corretas e aspectos gráficos que auxiliam para que as informações sejam visualmente acessíveis. Dessa forma, ao longo do século XX diversos pesquisadores desenvolveram métodos para medir a legibilidade de um texto, mostrando em que medida sua compreensão é simples ou complexa (Dubay, 2004). Estudos na área contábil vêm utilizando algumas dessas métricas para avaliar a legibilidade das NE. ...
A pesquisa buscou identificar o nível de legibilidade das Notas Explicativas (NE) das companhias vencedoras do Troféu Transparência da Associação Nacional de Executivos de Finanças, Administração e Contabilidade (ANEFAC) antes e após a adoção da Orientação Técnica do Comitê de Pronunciamentos Contábeis nº 07 (OCPC 07). A pesquisa considerou empresas premiadas entre 2012 e 2022. Utilizou-se para análise o Índice de Facilidade de Leitura de Flesch, teste de correlação de Spearman e teste de diferenças de médias de Mann-Whitney. Como resultado, a maioria das empresas premiadas apresentou legibilidade classificada como razoavelmente difícil, abrangendo 58,3% do total da amostra, seguida pelo nível fácil, com 21,1% das empresas analisadas. Assim, apesar de as empresas que já terem conquistado pelo menos um prêmio de transparência, em geral apresentaram nível de legibilidade razoavelmente baixo. Ressalta-se a importância de as empresas avaliarem a legibilidade das suas NE, considerando o impacto na compreensibilidade da informação divulgada.
... u k / . Numerous formulas were developed since the classic Flesch formula [65], including the Dall-Chall formula [68], the Flesch-Kincaid formula [29], SMOG [69], Gunning's Fog-Index, and the Cloze test [67]. Some traditional readability formula characteristics are sentence length, number of words, and number of sentences. ...
... The classic definition proposed by Klare [66] refers to readability as the ease of understanding or comprehension due to writing style. DuBay [67] defines it as what makes some texts easier to read than others. A more operative definition is the total sum of all elements within printed material that affect the reading success of a specific group of readers [68]. ...
This study examines the readability of government information about social benefits and rights concerning citizens’ engagement. Such information is often obscured and hard to find and, therefore, sometimes less accessible to those who mostly need it. How will readability characteristics affect engagement measures as attesting to information comprehension? This article addresses this question by analyzing year-long usage data records of an Israeli national rights website. We tested readability components to determine how they perform, and whether they affect engagement measures as evidence of comprehension. Analysis using the classic Flesch-Kincaid readability formula shows that most texts on the website are suitable for the college level. Furthermore, as the information was less readable, people spent more time on the page, and there was less bounce rate. Conversely, we found a positive correlation between exit percentage and readability measures. The results raise questions about the Flesch-Kincaid formula and the engagement measures’ relevance to information about benefits and rights, and highlight the need for a Hebrew-adapted readability formula. Further research directions are suggested.
... Clinicians and researchers have explored the behaviors of patient health literacy, and within this concept is the comprehension quality of texts provided in the education materials to patients. While there are numerous contributors to the quality of text comprehension, readability is a prominent concept that the literature has often assumed to be associated with comprehension within this area [8,9]. Historically, readability was defined by George Klare as "the ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing" [10]. ...
... Historically, readability was defined by George Klare as "the ease of understanding or comprehension due to the style of writing" [10]. When it comes to quantifying readability, it was the mid-19th century when the United States developed texts to be associated with grade-reading levels for students, and it has become a relatively common metric used by educators to assess student reading levels in the United States education system [9]. Eventually, the readability scoring will also become more frequent among adult civilians. ...
... These readability metrics were used in medicine, and the body of literature experienced tremendous growth in the 21st century, as demonstrated in Figure 1 [11][12][13]. The current readability metrics used to score texts are many, and DuBray reports that there may be over 200 readability formulas published [9]. In the current body of literature, many have often been used in medical education. ...
The increasing use of digital applications in healthcare has led to a greater need for patient education materials. These materials, often in the form of pamphlets, booklets, and handouts, are designed to supplement physician–patient communication and aim to improve patient outcomes. However, the effectiveness of these materials can be hindered by variations in patient health literacy. Readability, a measure of text comprehension, is a key factor influencing how well patients understand these educational materials. While there has been growing interest in readability assessment in medicine, many studies have demonstrated that digital texts do not frequently meet the recommended sixth-to-eighth grade reading level. The purpose of this opinion article is to review readability from the perspective of studies in pediatric medicine, internal medicine, preventative medicine, and surgery. This article aims to communicate that while readability is important, it tends to not fully capture the complexity of health literacy or effective patient communication. Moreover, a promising avenue to improve readability may be in generative artificial intelligence, as there are currently limited tools with similar effectiveness.
... In response, we propose addressing the need for communicating scientific findings to a broader audience by rewriting scholarly abstracts with simpler words and grammar using language models. Since readability is key to comprehending scholarship (Flesch, 1946;DuBay, 2004;Kerwer et al., 2021), we envision the resulting accessible narratives as paving the way for the "last mile" of science, broadening access to scientific understanding and engagement, especially for younger readers and those without a college degree. ...
A vast amount of scholarly work is published daily, yet much of it remains inaccessible to the general public due to dense jargon and complex language. To address this challenge in science communication, we introduce a reinforcement learning framework that fine-tunes a language model to rewrite scholarly abstracts into more comprehensible versions. Guided by a carefully balanced combination of word- and sentence-level accessibility rewards, our language model effectively substitutes technical terms with more accessible alternatives, a task which models supervised fine-tuned or guided by conventional readability measures struggle to accomplish. Our best model adjusts the readability level of scholarly abstracts by approximately six U.S. grade levels -- in other words, from a postgraduate to a high school level. This translates to roughly a 90% relative boost over the supervised fine-tuning baseline, all while maintaining factual accuracy and high-quality language. An in-depth analysis of our approach shows that balanced rewards lead to systematic modifications in the base model, likely contributing to smoother optimization and superior performance. We envision this work as a step toward bridging the gap between scholarly research and the general public, particularly younger readers and those without a college degree.
... The concept of readability is defined as the ease of reading words and sentences, and this concept is expressed as the feature of the comprehensibility of the text (Dubay, 2004). Readability measurements provide information about how difficult a text is to read. ...
Readability is a measurable quantitative feature of texts. Readability gives information about how easy or difficult a text is to read. This information can help decide appropriate texts for courses and exams. There are 3 formulas, called Ateşman, Çetinkaya-Uzun, and Bezirci-Yılmaz, which are widely used in determining the readability of Turkish texts. The purpose of this study is to determine the readability of the Turkish questions in the Higher Education Institutions Exam, the Basic Proficiency Test conducted between 2019-2023 with Ateşman and Bezirci-Yılmaz formulas. The dataset consists of a total of 200 questions, 40 from each year, asked between 2019 and 2023. According to the findings, it was revealed that both formulas used in the study were consistent and the readability levels of the formulas were similar. According to the used formulas, it was observed that the questions in 2019 were the easiest and the test questions in 2021 were the most difficult to read. It has been determined that the number of questions in question types varies over the years, phonics questions are the question type with the easiest, and questions related to sentence meaning are the most difficult readability level. It was concluded that the questions were mainly at the difficult level according to the Ateşman formula, and at the academic level according to the Bezirci-Yılmaz formula.
... Readability metrics are language-specific [76]. The most popular [77] metrics are the Gunning fog index [78], the Flesch reading ease [79], and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook [80]. The metrics have been criticized for their inability to capture more complex aspects of a language. ...
The growing use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI's GPT series, leads to disruptive changes across organizations. At the same time, there is a growing concern about how organizations handle personal data. Thus, privacy policies are essential for transparency in data processing practices, enabling users to assess privacy risks. However, these policies are often long and complex. This might lead to user confusion and consent fatigue, where users accept data practices against their interests, and abusive or unfair practices might go unnoticed. LLMss can be used to assess privacy policies for users automatically. In this interdisciplinary work, we explore the challenges of this approach in three pillars, namely technical feasibility, ethical implications, and legal compatibility of using LLMs to assess privacy policies. Our findings aim to identify potential for future research, and to foster a discussion on the use of LLM technologies for enabling users to fulfil their important role as decision-makers in a constantly developing AI-driven digital economy.
... The experts will give a rating for each summary result produced by the system. The ratings are readable, partially readable, and non-readable with several conditions as consideration [34], [36], [72]: (1) the summary should be understandable, non-redundant, and focused on the main topic; ...
... However, is the methodology used to grade texts valid in an EFL context? This issue has generated considerable interest and debate among educators, linguists, and researchers since at least the 1950s (DuBay, 2004), leading to the development of various methods to assess and enhance readability. This paper aims to provide an overview and evaluation of the most utilized readability formulas, and to show how such formulas may be employed to enhance readability within a Japanese university context. ...
Various measures of readability were initially created to aid educators in selecting texts appropriate for students. While readability formulas are primarily utilized in EFL reading to evaluate the appropriateness of books for students at specific grade levels or age groups, they can also serve as tools for identifying key EFL text features. The primary objective of this study is to introduce readers to the most commonly employed readability formulas in a Japanese university context and present both the advantages and pitfalls of their utilization. The goal here is to provide readers with an understanding of the historical context of these formulas, but also their limitations based on findings from various studies.
... Prior studies in natural language processing have proposed a myriad of quantitative linguistic measures of word, sentence, and passage complexity, and developed automatic tools assessing readability of texts for first-and second-language speakers of various languages (e.g., Crossley et al., 2016;Rysová et al., 2016;Sato et al., 2008). Cognitive plausibility of the complexity measures has long been at the forefront of this research area (e.g., Crossley et al., 2008;DuBay, 2004). Yet, it is only recently that the area has recognized the eyemovement record of the cognitive effort during reading as a source of a useful constraint on the psychological validity of the proposed measures (e.g., Green, 2014;Klerke et al., 2015, and citations above). ...
The link between the cognitive effort of word processing and the eye movement patterns elicited by that word is well established in psycholinguistic research using eye tracking. Yet less evidence or consensus exists regarding whether the same link exists between complexity linguistic complexity measures of a sentence or passage, and eye movements registered at the sentence or passage level. This paper focuses on “global” measures of syntactic and lexical complexity, i.e., the measures that characterise the structure of the sentence or passage rather than aggregate lexical properties of individual words. We selected several commonly used global complexity measures and tested their predictive power against sentence- and passage-level eye movements in samples of text reading from 13 languages represented in the Multilingual Eye Movement Corpus (MECO). While some syntactic or lexical complexity measures elicited statistically significant effects, they were negligibly small and not of practical relevance for predicting the processing effort either in individual languages or across languages. These findings suggest that the “eye-mind” link known to be valid at the word level may not scale up to larger linguistic units.
