Creating Engaging Content In The Face Of Readability Formulas
What We Do
At wichealth.org our mission is to improve the quality of life for those we serve by helping them change their health behaviors. We do this through an online behavior-based web application that delivers highly personalized and tailored parent-child feeding content. That content is directed to our audience that includes people from all over the country. They are urbanites, rural folk, remote islanders, natives, and immigrants. Some of our clients have easy access to basic resources like grocery stores, while others do not. We serve people who only speak English, folks who are fluent in several languages, and many people whose second language is English. We have clients who never graduated from high school and clients with college degrees, and while many of our families have only known poverty, some have roots in a life of means and are now experiencing struggle.
Not only do our clients possess diverse social backgrounds, they also enter our online nutrition education lessons at varying levels of readiness to change. While some are ready to tackle behavior changes, others don’t even recognize the need to consider change. For example, we have:
- Clients who cook home prepared meals most of the time and who are actively looking to grow their kitchen skills.
- Moms who want to make more home cooked meals but don’t know how.
- Moms who are convinced they’ll never be able to manage a home cooked meal
- Moms who think that if it comes out of a box, can, or freezer bag at home it’s “home cooked.”
These many facets of diversity not only create a challenge for our team to identify content that works regionally and culturally, we also have to concentrate on centering our writing in languaging practices that ensure a respectful, encouraging, and empowering relationship. Our writing must simultaneously convey our ideas without demeaning either those who struggle to read or those who have the privilege of being highly educated. Essentially, we must always break down and analyze at a highly detailed level, both what we say and how we say it.
On top of that, we have to factor in that our clients only know us digitally, mostly via their smartphones, which means there is an absence of so many of the nonverbal cues people typically use to create and nurture relationships such as: eye contact, tone, pitch, volume, and speed of our voices, facial expressions, and hand gestures, it quickly becomes daunting work.
Formula Frustrations
Regardless of the challenges, we are committed to accomplishing our goal of writing in a way that is both accessible and engaging. To do so, one of the factors we pay close attention to is what is known in the academic world as readability. Essentially, readability is the ease in which a passage can be read, correlated with a grade level in school. So, if a passage could easily be understood by the average 6th grader, it is deemed to have a 6th grade reading level. Sounds simple enough, right? Oh, if only! Unfortunately, like many concepts, when we start talking readability we quickly find there are as many opinions about what it is and how it should be determined as there are people.
So, how exactly is readability determined? What are its implications? And, how do we work with it in creating our lessons and resources?
Digging Into How The Formulas Work
At first glance, the question of readability appears a quick and easy factor to measure as there are dozens and dozens of formulas and apps available within a few strategic clicks of a keyboard. However, once we take a closer look, it becomes frustratingly clear that these formulas and the apps that make use of them have serious limitations that need to be considered.
Most formulas work in a similar way. When a written passage is analyzed the formula runs a simple measurement of the total number of words, the number of words in each sentence, and the number of syllables in a sentence. From there the formula determines a grade level at which the passage should be easily understood. For example, a passage that is assessed at a 5th grade reading level should be reader friendly for anyone who has mastered reading at a 5th grade level. Sounds simple enough, right? What could be the problem? Well, despite the fact that most online apps allow the user to run a diagnostic on as little as a single sentence, most formulas require samples that contain a minimum of 100 continuous words to “work.” Additionally, the majority of readability formulas are actually designed for optimal use with a passage consisting of a minimum of 300 words. This may work well for written work that can easily fit these length requirements, but much of our writing is significantly shorter as it is conversational and purposely designed to be brief and to the point.
The most significant factor that readability formulas ignore is the reader experience. Reader experience is all the prior knowledge, individual experiences, skills, and perceptions a reader brings to the reading. Nor do formulas account for cultural and regional influences such as slang, colloquialisms, and dialectal derivations that all influence a reader’s ability to comprehend and attach meaning to new information. Readabilityformulas.com freely acknowledges and warns its users that, “A readability formula that counts syllables and length of sentences does not consider the knowledge, life experience, literacy skills, and active search for meaning that individuals bring to the task of reading.” As mentioned above, our work reaches a diverse audience these factors must be considered as we write our content.
Apps and Margins of Error
To add to the conundrum of accurately assessing readability, the readability of a particular passage may vary depending on the app being used. For example, we plugged in the exact same 300+ word passage into three different online apps that all use the Flesch-Kincaid formula, and all three reported a different grade level. Unfortunately, the range of levels reported varied by more than an entire grade! Grrrrrrr…
You can just imagine the enormous problem this becomes when different team members (who also live across the country) working on the same project make use of different Apps to measure the readability!
The Importance of Word Choice
But that’s not all! Goodness, no. Oh, if it would only be as simple as having everyone use the same App.
Alas, there is more to consider. Because most formulas focus on simple counting of words and syllables, it is crucial to carefully note the individual word choices in any given text. For example, in a recent lesson we created around working with recipes, we focused on teaching our clients how to use simple ingredient substitutions. You know, like using applesauce in a cookie recipe instead of oil, or lemon instead of vinegar in homemade salad dressing. Because substitutions is a multisyllabic word, despite the fact that in the context it was being used it was also a common word, its use raised the overall readability of the lesson by an entire grade level. Hrmph! Obviously, it’s not difficult to recognize that many syllables doesn’t always equal difficulty. Equally so, we can’t presume that a single syllable word is easily understood! Clearly, the word substitutions despite its many syllables is not as difficult to understand as an unfamiliar word such as teff.
Walking the Fine Line!
So, how do we balance the need to measure readability with the limitations of the tools we have available?
First, we remember that readability is subjective and available measures merely provide a “ballpark” estimate. Then we determine which App and measures within that App we are going to use and make sure our entire team is applying them consistently. Most importantly, we take the time to dig in and use our own powers of observation to analyze the individual word choices that may be inspiring a false sense of imbalance.
Bottom Line
Despite the obvious convenience of being able to quickly load content into an App and acquire a reading level score, it is imperative to avoid using these Apps as a sole indicator of the actual readability of the writing. We must take into account that these formulas albeit helpful are only ballpark measures and that it is crucial to the clients we are committed to serving that we never use these formulas in isolation.
