What is the reading level of VISs?
Defining the readibility of a VIS by a traditional “grade level” measure can be difficult and misleading. Two of the criteria used by standard readibility formulas are word length and sentence length. Word length is not necessarily a reliable measure of readibility, as there are multi-syllable words that are widely understood (e.g., “individual”) and short words that are not (e.g., “spiv”). VISs are often unavoidably saddled with long words (“Haemophilus influenzae” for instance, or “vaccination” or “compensation” or “polysaccharide”) which drive the reading level up. Sentence length can be a problem with VISs because they incorporate bulleted lists, which may be read as very long sentences (no period), while they are actually quite easy to understand. Applying a Fletch-Kincaid test to a VIS usually reveals about a 10th grade reading level, but this should be taken with the caveats in the preceeding paragraph. In what may be a more useful measure of readability, several VISs were the s
