It was not long ago (i.e., in 1994) that the results from the "Adult Literacy in America" study (accomplished by the Educational Testing Service for the U.S. Government; which studied 26,000 adults) were announced which rather starkly indicated that nearly half of the adults in the Country possess literacy skills that make it difficult for them to hold what might be considered as well-paying jobs. Even a surprising number of college graduates were found to only read at less than college levels. Dr. Stone recommends that any written composition/document that is utilized, via reading, to communicate necessary details to individuals be very carefully examined with respect to its readability level. To expect an individual to comprehend or otherwise understand a written communication that requires reading skills beyond that possessed by the involved individual can be a very major error. If legal ramifications are present with respect to whether such an involved individual is sufficiently aware or is adequately understanding of what he/she has read, then this type of question becomes even more important.

Readability is a measure of the ease with which a given passage of text can be read and understood. The only complete way to test readability is to give people a passage to read and then follow up with a test to see if they understood it. If a significant number do understand the passage, it may be generalized that many other people with about the same level of reading skills will understand it too. After finding a way to predict reading levels that agree with how people actually score on standardized passages, one should also be able to predict how well they will understand other reading material or similar difficulty. This is the rationale behind readability estimates.

Almost all readability estimates use some measure of word difficulty and syntactic complexity as their main predictors. Examples of word difficulty predictors are word length, syllable counts, and the number of unfamiliar words. Examples of sentence difficulty predictors are the number of dependent clauses and average sentence length. Of these, the number of unfamiliar words and average sentence length have proven to be the best predictors.

Many factors contribute to the readability of a passage. Size of print, illustrations, and inherent difficulty of the subject matter are but a few. While readability estimates can be lowered by breaking long sentences into shorter ones and by using more common synonyms of unfamiliar words, most studies show that very little, if any, increases in comprehension is gained by this practice. In addition, it is important to understand what the various readability estimate formulas will not do. They do not take into account many of the most important aspects of the material and its relationship to the reader. They do not take into account the interest areas and interest level of the material. They do not deal with style and syntax. Perhaps the most important of all, they do no relate to the background of experience and interest on the part of the reader, and are unrelated to personal and ethnic variables.

A careful reading of the scientific literature pertaining to readability estimation and of the development of formalized procedures for the estimation of readability for text passages indicates that a large number of such procedures have been suggested and described. Some of these procedures seem to be more recognized as being of higher quality or of having higher validity than do others. Dr. Stone has brought together computer software for seven different readability analysis estimation procedures which are believed to be generally viewed a being the more widely accepted or recognized procedures. These seven readability estimation procedures are: the Spache (S) method, the Fry (F) method, the Raygor method, the Flesch (Fl) method, , , and the Gunning –Fog (G-F) method.

The text passages of a studied document are typed into computer memory and the software logic, for these above named readability estimation methods becomes activated with the result that each method then assigns a school grade-level number to indicate the ease/difficulty level of the subject document. Depending upon the estimation method, the reading school-grade levels can vary from the first-grade level to well up in what is regarded as being college-level readability level.

If an individual, who was detained by police, was shown a printed page that contained what is known as the Miranda Rights statements, along with a waiver of rights statement description, and was asked to read and initial and sign various parts of this page, a very real question can be asked. Did the individual possess sufficient reading skills that would allow him to read the page and to comprehend/understand what he was reading? If not, then how valid are his initials/signature(s) on the document? The individual’s reading skills level can be very easily determined using any of the multiple number of reading skills tests that are available. [Note – Dr. Stone generally prefers to utilize the Slosson Oral Reading Test as well as the Ohio Literacy Test for this purpose.] If a subject individual’s reading skills level is tested at a level that is significantly below that of the determined readability level (based upon use of one or all seven of the above named readability estimation methodologies) that has been found for a given document, then it can be rather reasonably assumed that the individual most likely was not able to accurate read and comprehend/understand what he/she had read. If the document in question were, in fact, the Miranda Rights statements, along with the appropriate waiver of rights statement, then it can be inferred that the subject individual most likely had some kind of faulty, inadequate, or incomplete comprehension/understanding of his/her reading of the Miranda Rights statements and the accompanying waive of rights statement.

In Dr. Stone’s forensic psychology practice, the above described situation has been repeatedly found in real life. Quite often, authorities request that individuals, in any number of situations, read and sign documents. The validity of achieved comprehension of such thusly signed documents can be tested by a determination of the readability level of the document and then to compare this level to the tested reading skills level of the involved individual who signed the document. If possessed reading skills are equal to or above the readability level of the document, then the signature most likely can be considered as a valid indication that the involved individual did comprehend and understand what he/she was signing. However, if the tested reading skills level is significantly below the document’s determined readability level, then it can be argued that the individual’s signature is not a valid indicator or his/her adequate comprehension/understanding the document.

Dr. Stone has been determining readability levels for written documents for over the past decade. In fact, he has published an article, in a professional psychology journal, that describes such a matter. In the article ( ) he presented a readability level determination for a particular ‘Consent to Receive Psychotherapy’ form that psychological counselors and psychotherapists had been urged to employ. He found that the readability level of the form could be regarded as being close to a ‘college graduate’ level. In other words, many likely clients/patients, whose reading skills were not so high or advanced, most likely would have some faulty or incomplete comprehension/understanding of what was being communicated by the form that they were being asked to read and sign.

Dr. Stone can scientifically analyze readability level(s) for any specific document.  His approach, methodology and expertise have been utilized and tested in the past in a number of different forensic cases.  Are you aware of the readability levels for the many documents you routinely request individuals, with whom you deal, to read and to sign (or initial)?

If one is intersted in communicating with Dr. Stone, his E-mail address is:
lastone2@earthlink.net