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A comparison of the readability of abstracts with their source documents

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  • Rosemary King

Abstract

Readability levels of 30 items from Child Development Abstracts and 30 passages from their corresponding journal articles were compared by a CAL SNOBOL computer program referenced to a cloze criterion. The difference between mean predicted cloze restoration percentage scores of 26.77 for abstracts and 30.37 for articles proved to be significant beyond the .05 level. Results supported the hypothesis that abstracts were more difficult to read than their source documents, but indicated that perhaps both types of materials were too hard for undergraduates.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosemary King, 1976. "A comparison of the readability of abstracts with their source documents," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 27(2), pages 118-121, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:27:y:1976:i:2:p:118-121
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.4630270207
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    Cited by:

    1. James Hartley & James W. Pennebaker & Claire Fox, 2003. "Abstracts, introductions and discussions: How far do they differ in style?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 57(3), pages 389-398, July.
    2. Tan Jin & Huiqiong Duan & Xiaofei Lu & Jing Ni & Kai Guo, 2021. "Do research articles with more readable abstracts receive higher online attention? Evidence from Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(10), pages 8471-8490, October.

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