Comparison of readability of specialty knowledge tests to reading abilities of Air Force enlisted personnel

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine how well the Specialty Knowledge Tests (SKTs) selected for this study matched the airman population assigned to their respective Air Force career fields in regard to reading grade level (RGL). The specific research question that was examined in this study was to determine how closely the mean RGLs of each of the 20 E-5 SKTs matched the mean entrance RGLs of the airman population in each of the 20 corresponding Air Force specialties at the mean RGL or within 1 standard deviation (SD) below the mean RGL of the airman population (reduced RGL). Previous readability researchers have concentrated on using RGL formulas to estimate the RGLs of prose. In contrast, only a few studies were found that estimated the readability of multiple-choice tests. For this study, the FORCAST Readability Formula (Caylor, Sticht, Fox, & Ford, 1973) was used to collect the data and estimate the RGLs of each of the SKTs. In addition, the instructions were adapted to be applicable for use with multiple-choice tests. The basic design of this study was a comparison of the mean RGLs of the 20 E-5 SKTs selected for this study and the mean entrance RGLs of the airman population in the corresponding Air Force specialties. Then the mean RGL scores from each of the SKTs were compared to the mean entrance RGL scores of airmen in each of their respective Air Force specialties using data from Faneuff's (1990) "Reading Grade Level on the Air Force Reading Abilities Test (AFRAT) Scale." The results of this study indicated that all of the estimated mean RGLs of the 20 E-5 SKTs were above the mean RGLs and reduced RGLs of the airman population from the corresponding Air Force specialties. Therefore, the RGLs did not match. It was concluded that the readability levels of the 20 E-5 SKTS selected for this study were written above the reading abilities of the airman population from each corresponding Air Force specialty.