Abstract readability as a factor in information systems

Gladys B. Dronberger and Gerald T. Kowitz

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1975, vol. 26, issue 2, 108-111

Abstract: Documents may be accessed by increasingly efficient retrieval of abstracts, but information will not be transferred unless the abstracts are read. It is suggested that the measurement of the readability of abstracts can provide an assessment of one phase of an information system: the system/user interface. Controlled reading levels for abstracts could result in more rapid processing of abstracts and a wider use of the information system. It was hypothesized that the use of readability principles in guidelines for abstracting would result in abstracts of lower reading levels than the source documents upon which they were based. Abstracts and their source documents were selected randomly from the information system supported by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC); readability scores were calculated using the Flesch Reading Ease formula. Comparisons among reading levels were made using analysis of variance for correlated data and Tukey's Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) test for post hoc comparisons. Results indicated that the reading level of abstracts was significantly higher than the reading level of source documents, but not higher than the reading ability of the intended audience. It was concluded that readability measurement provides one useful techinque for hte evaluation of abstracts.

Date: 1975
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