The Changing Readability of Introductory Political
                                Science Textbooks: A Case Study of Burns and Peltason,
                                    <i>Government by the People</i>

Heilke, Thomas; Joslyn, Mark R.; Aguado, N. Alexander

doi:10.1017/s1049096503002130

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…8 Higher scores indicate documents that are harder to read. The use and validity of the Flesch-Kincaid scores are supported by other studies (Heilke, Joslyn, and Aguado 2003;Sanders and McCormick 1993;Tefki 1987).…”

Section: Ballot Instructionssupporting

confidence: 64%

Ballot Design and Unrecorded Votes on Paper-Based Ballots

Kimball

Kropf

2005

Public Opinion Quarterly

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The 2000 presidential election focused attention on the problem of unrecorded votes, in which a person casts a ballot but fails to record a valid vote for a particular contest. Although much recent research has evaluated voting technologies and their effects on unrecorded votes, there has been little research on the effects of ballot design. We argue that the same theories used to design and evaluate self-administered surveys can be used to analyze ballot features. We collect and code paper-based ballots used in the 2002 general election from 250 counties in 5 states. We code the ballots in terms of several graphic design elements, including the content and location of ballot instructions and the layout of candidate names and office titles. Our analysis suggests that several ballot features are associated with unrecorded votes (both overvotes and undervotes) in the gubernatorial contests. We also find that ballot design features exacerbate the racial disparity in unrecorded votes. Ballot design can be an important factor in determining whether voters are able to cast a ballot accurately, which can influence the legitimacy of elections. The 2000 presidential election and the Florida recount controversy illuminated the phenomenon of unrecorded votes (in which some voters come to polling places but fail to cast a valid vote for a particular contest). Roughly 2 million voters (almost 1 out of every 50 to cast a ballot) failed to cast a valid vote for president in the 2000 election (Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 2001). The Florida imbroglio prompted a new wave of research on election administration and a flurry of election reform laws in Congress and

show abstract

Section: Ballot Instructionssupporting

confidence: 64%

Ballot Design and Unrecorded Votes on Paper-Based Ballots

Kimball

Kropf

2005

Public Opinion Quarterly

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many scholars and researchers were concerned about the measurement of readability of different types of texts and textbooks (e.g. Jabbari & Saghari, 2011;Maftoon & Daghigh, 2001;Bargate, 2012;Kithinji & Kass, 2010;Plucinski et al, 2009;Heilke et al, 2003;Brabston et al, 1998, etc). Since readability is considered as an important quality of textbooks, this research aims to measure and compare the readability levels of English translation textbooks and their Persian translations by the use of the Gunning Fog Index.…”

Section: Readability Formulasmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Study of the Readability of English Textbooks of Translation and Their Persian Translations

Kolahi

Shirvani²

2012

IJL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The main concern of the present study was to compare the readability level of English textbooks of translation and their Persian translations using the Gunning Fog Index. To this end the corpus of the study comprised five translation textbooks written in English and their Persian translations. The reason behind choosing these textbooks is that they are the only translation textbooks translated into Persian. Two hundred and eighty four sample texts were chosen randomly and examined in terms of readability levels; 142 sample texts from English textbooks of translation and 142 sample texts which were the translations of the respective English sample texts. Based on the outcomes of the research the average Fog Index of English textbooks of translation was 16.4 while the average Fog Index of their Persian translations was 20.1. This means that Persian textbooks of translation are 3.7 grade levels above their English originals in terms of readability level. The higher the Fog Index, the less readable the text is. The findings of the study showed that translation textbooks which have been translated into Persian are less readable than their English originals.

show abstract

“…Applications of this formula can be found in various fields of research as well as in more practical contexts, such as the phrasing of medical instructions (e.g. Hartley et al 2004;Hayden 2008;Heilke et al 2003;Lowrey 2006).…”

Section: The Manifesto Readershipmentioning

confidence: 99%