Human Factors and Behavioral Science: A Study of the Match Between the Stylistic Difficulty of Technical Documents and the Reading Skills of Technical Personnel

Abstract

The reading grade level of a sample of Bell System technical documents was assessed using the Flesch Reading Ease Index, which estimates the reading skill needed to cope with a document's writing style. The reading skills of two groups of Bell System craft and management trainees were also estimated from their performance on a standardized reading test. We found that most of these employees had sufficient reading skill to deal with the writing styles of the sample documents. This observed match between readers and documents resulted because most of our students were proficient readers, not because the documents' writing styles were easy. We compared the reading skills of students as they entered and completed training to see whether less able students were eliminated during training. Results did not support training selection as an explanation of our readers' proficiency. While results indicated that many Bell System employees have the reading skills necessary to cope with the technical documents they read, others may find that the writing styles of technical documents are real barriers to success on the job. We can identify a document that may place an undue burden on its readers by estimating the likelihood of a mismatch between the document's readability and the reading skills of its users.