Technical Report - International Military Testing Association

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THEOREnGAhfYlsl~OSlUfali-LEROYJOHI1SlOn,CHAI~AR
USWAVALEXAIBI#IIGGE#TEB
Relationship Between Raadability and Validity
of 140s Evaluation Tests
.TCXW S. BRAND
US Army Enlisted Evaluation Center
Cronbach states‘in his book Essentiala of Psychological Testing:
“Tests having the same ‘content’ may measure different abilities because
of variables associated with itam form. Reading ability, for example,
affects scores on almost all achievement tests. A valid measure of knowledge
is not obtained if a pearson who knws a fact misses an item about
it because of verbal difficulties.” Cronbach goes on to ahow the superior
validity of picture items over verbal items.
A number of methods have been proposed for measuring the readability
or reading difficulty level of written matter. The principal ones investigated
by this offfce are those of Gunning, Flesch, and the Farr-Jenkine-
Paterson modifi:ation of the Flesch method. These three methods, which
are essentially variants of the same basic principles, were initially
applied to several samples of written matter. It was concluded that the
results obtained from the three methods were essentially the same. The
Gunning method, however, has the advantage of being simpler, and was
therefore adopted as a method for the measurement of readability.
This psychologist is only aware of two papere dealing with the
readability of tests. Neither of these present methods for determining
the readability of individual test itema.
Long words and long sentences have baen shown to be the principle
determiners of readability. The three methods mentioned above all use
average sentence length as one determiner of reading difficulty. In
determining average sentence length, independent clauses are counted
as sentencea.
Flesch counts all syllables to determine the average word length.
Farr-Jenkins-Patterson suggest that the same information may be obtained
more easily by counting one-syllable words. Gunning counts words vith
three or more syllables to determine percentage of “hard” words.
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