I__. - International Military Testing Association

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The Effect of Reading Difficulty
on Correspondence Course Performance
Dr Grover E. Diehl (ECI)
During the 1989-90 academic year the Air Force Extension Course
Institute(EC1) broadly examined the impact on reading level on
the correspondence courses in Career Development Course (CDC)
First reading grade levels (RGL) of CDCs were
~~~~~%$ using Che FORCAST method. The FORCAST method involved
the manual counting of words in samples of text. These RGLs here
then examined to determine whether the RGLs had increased significantly
on a year by year basis and also with 1982 data to
determine whether there were significant differences between the
samples. Next, RGLs were correlated with end-of-course performance
by percent of first time exam failures and then by proportion
of overall course failures. Following this, the FORCAST
RGLs were correlated with target RGLs prepared by the Air Force
Human Resources Laboratory and with computer generated RGLs
using a Flesch-Kincade formula.
A basic intervening variable in the assessment of reading difficulty,
however, was the fact that personnel and Air Force jobs
were matched during enlistment processing so that the most intellectually
demanding skills were peopled with the most intellectually
able personnel. One way around this problem was to
calculate difference scores between the RGL targets and the obtained
FORCAST RGLs -- a measure of perceived difficulty of the
material to the student -- and correlate this with failure rate.
This procedure treated student ability as a covariate with a
corresponding reduction in the error portion of the predication
equation, without the necessity of using analysis of variance.An
analysis of difference scores constituted the last question to
be addressed.
Findings
FORCAST RGL and Edition Date. No statistically significant association
was found between the FORCAST reading level and the edition
date of the materials (a period of about 12 years). The
Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient (r) of FORCAST
RGL with edition date was .0742 (N = 215, p =.279). To check
for possible curvilinearity, a scatterplot was prepared which
suggested a completely random occurrence pattern. FORCAST reading
level did not vary in a linear way from year to year.
Difference Between RGLs Sampled in 1982 and 1990. There was apparently
sufficient variation within the samples to be statisti-
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