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The Readability of Principles of Macroeconomics Textbooks

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  • Sarah Tinkler
  • James Woods

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 among 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Tinkler & James Woods, 2013. "The Readability of Principles of Macroeconomics Textbooks," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 178-191, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jeduce:v:44:y:2013:i:2:p:178-191
    DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2013.770345
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    1. William E. Becker & Michael Watts (ed.), 1998. "Teaching Economics to Undergraduates," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1643.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hadsell, Lester & Jones, Adam T, 2020. "The company you keep: Satisfaction with life, economic freedom, and preference-policy mismatch," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 642-657.
    2. Adam T. Jones & Lester Hadsell & Robert T. Burrus, 2019. "Capitalist Views and Religion," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 384-414, June.

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