The OR Corrective: Making Readability Formulas Work for Workbooks and Textbooks.

When readability formulas are used to review workbooks and textbooks their value is limited because application techniques have failed to take into consideration the exercises and examples in these books. The O'Hear and Ramsey (OR) Corrective technique has been developed to alleviate this problem. It allows readability data to be used accurately in making two kinds of comparisons. First, the reading levels of text, exercises, and examples within a book can be compared, thus revealing possible inconsistencies. Second, the data can be used (1) to produce whole-book reading levels (which have been adjusted on the basis of the three categories) and therefore (2) to compare one book with another. No matter which readability formula is used, the first three steps in applying the OR Corrective technique are the same: select chapters; estimate amount of text, exercise, and example in those chapters; and calculate estimated percentage of text, example, and exercise in the whole book. The fourth step, determining the readability level of each content category, differs with the formula selected. The fifth step, recombining the levels of the categories to obtain corrected whole-book readability, is again universal. To see whether the OR Corrective technique improved the accuracy of readability estimates, it was used with the Flesch, SMOG, and Fry formulas in determining the readability of three textbooks. Results determined that this technique is a way to gain accurate readability data. (HOD)