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Readability is in the Mind of the Reader

University of Southern California

Bruce S. Koch

North Texas State University

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.

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