The most readable items match 6th graders. Let us take advantage of the regression line in Figure 1 to imagine what question it is more likely that respondents actually answered when confronted with an unreadable question. Figure 2 shows the lexile location of 3 reasonable rewordings of Item 11. Middle category use vs. question readability. This version is still too complicated.
Option b is on the regression line.
We may surmise that, whatever our respondents understood the item to say, it was only as complex as this. According to Figure 2, this has gone too far for the behavior exhibited this time. But, since a further objective is to increase the proportion of informative responses to our items, we will learn from option c and other, even simpler, rewordings of this item how to write better questionaires. The great inquiry relates to that which is essential rather than to that which is accidental. Of course that which is accidental has to come into the inquiry.