How to Display Readability Scores for Consent Forms
(How to Determine that Your Consent Form is at the 8th Grade Level)

The IRB requires that language in consent forms be at an 8th-grade reading level. Microsoft Word has the capability to aid investigators in evaluating their consent forms prior to submission.

These instructions come from the Help Menu in Word.

1.    On the Word Tools menu, click Options, then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

2.    Select the Check grammar with spelling check box. (See graphic at the end of 
 this tip.)

3.    Select the Show readability statistics check box, then click OK.

4.    Open your Consent Form in Word and run the spelling & grammar check.

When Microsoft Word finishes checking spelling and grammar, it displays information about the reading level of the document.

Here is the display from an actual consent form:

                                                                             

The last entry shows that the grade level is 9.7 (average reading level for someone in the 2nd half of 9th grade).

Obviously this level is too high.

There are 2 ways to lower the grade level: (1) Use fewer long words; and (2) Use shorter sentences. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

Rates text on a U.S. school grade level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an average student can understand the document at the beginning of 8th grade. For most documents, aim for a score of approximately 7.0 to 8.0.

The formula for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is:

(.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – 15.59

where:

ASL = average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences)

ASW = average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words)

Obviously this is an inexact scale that makes no provision for content, but it will give investigators a rough guide.

 

Notes

·   If you've set up Word to check the spelling and grammar of text in other languages, and a document contains text in multiple languages, Word displays readability statistics for text in the last language that was checked. For example, if a document contains three paragraphs — the first in English, the second in French, and the third in English — Word displays readability statistics for the third English paragraph only.

  ·   For some European languages within an English document, Word displays only
  information about counts and averages, not readability.

 

Note that Word can check the readability of a Consent Form in Spanish.

 

Here's a screenshot of Word/Tools/Options/Spelling & Grammar:

Chris Ganahl, FileMaker Developer
(501) 686-8715, UAMS slot 749, cpganahl@uams.edu 
March 29, 2005