TextLab – An Objective, Reliable and Efficient Online-Tool for Readability Measurement

Methodical BackgroundSince its formation in the 1920s, readability measurement develo-ped numerous instruments for academic and applied research, the so-called readability formulas. They allow for the comparison of text comprehensibility in an objective, reliable and efficientway. Applications include research on school books, administrative documents and newspapers. Since the 1980s, automated readabili-ty tools have been developed. However, academic research has yet largely ignored the potentials of these devices.

Rudolf Flesch (8 May 1911 – 5 October 1986) was an author, and also a readability expert and writing consultant who was a vigorous proponent of plain English in the United States. He created the Flesch Reading Ease test and was co-creator of the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test.

Simple Handling

Comprehensibility of German Party Manifestos Path Model With Text and Recipient Traits

Extensive Readability Statistics

Visual Analysis

Comprehensibility of Political Online Communication (polit-monitor.de)

Export to CSV-Format

Word Choice of the Major German Political Parties (polit-monitor.de)

TextLab – Features & EmploymentTextLab is a unique device for the measurement of text compre-hensibility with an objective, reliable and efficient online-tool that offers a vast number of validated readability indicators. Users can revert to 22 validated readability formulas and over 150 readability-related text parameters.

This also includes two formulas and several parameters and algo-rithms that were newly developed and offer certain advantages in comparison to the existing ones. The measurement procedure is fairly simple: After some standard adjustments, texts can be pasted into an in input field and are then analyzed automatically by the software. Results can be exported to csv-format. This makes it easy to import the text data into analysis tools like SPSS.

TextLab - ApplicationsTextLab has already been used for several readability studies. For example, we analyzed German party manifestos for several elections since 1994, including federal elections, the last election for the European parliament and several elections on regional and local level.

Furthermore, we used TextLab to explore the comprehensibility of websites, interviews, speeches, newspapers and banking documents.

Our results show that TextLab is not only an objective, reliable and efficient but also a valid tool for readability measurements. In a doctoral thesis, parameters that had been collected with TextLab showed strong explanatory power in complex path models that also included relevant recipient characteristics and reactions. We also use TextLab to continuously measure the comprehensibility and the word choice of the major German political parties‘ online communication. The results show distinct relations between political language use, communicators, issue topics and events.

Jan Kercher, Frank Brettschneider (University of Hohenheim) and Anikar Haseloff (H & H Communication Lab GmbH)

Rudolf Flesch

206.835 - 1.015 -84.6total syllablestotal words(total words

total sentences( ) )

The formula for the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES)with a range of values from 0 (very confusing) to 100 (very easy)