Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-22-2013
Subjects
Macroeconomics -- Textbooks -- Analysis, Readability (Literary Style)
Abstract
The authors evaluated principles of macroeconomics textbooks for readability using Coh-Metrix, a computational linguistics tool. Additionally, they conducted an experiment on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Web site in which participants ranked the readability of text samples. There was a wide range of scores on readability indexes both between textbooks and within textbooks. Results from the Mechanical Turk experiment revealed that the Flesch Reading Ease Index does not predict which samples readers will prefer, but readers do prefer samples that are thematically similar, as identified by Latent Semantic Analysis. There were differences in the responses of native and non-native-but-proficient English speakers to the text samples, suggesting that the intended audience is an important determinant of readability.
DOI
10.1080/00220485.2013.770345
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/9342
Citation Details
Tinkler, Sarah and Woods, James, "The Readability of Principles of Macroeconomics Textbooks" (2013). Economics Faculty Publications and Presentations. 8.
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/9342
Description
This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in The Journal of Economic Education 2013 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220485.2013.770345 The manuscript is embargoed until September 2014.