Readability, Interest, and Coverage of 28 Textbooks on Education of Children with Behavioral Disorders.

Analyzed with the Flesch formula for reading ease and interest were 28 textbooks on the education of children with behavioral disorders and/or emotional distur bance. Reading levels were surprisingly low with one book in the "standard, grade 8 to 9" category, 8 in the "fairly difficult, grade 10 to 12" category, and the other 19 in the "difficult, college level" category; 11 of the books were classifed as "dull", 15 as "mildly interesting", one as "interesting", and one as "highly interesting". Text book coverage on 25 topics was also analyzed and charted. Great disparity was found in the topics treated by the various authors. Near-unanimous coverage of the topic of behavioral theory was found, while coverage was sparse on the topics of normal development, counter theory, and motivation. Some of the textbooks were found to have inadequate subject and author indices and only 7 of the books contain a glossary. Oneof the first problemsfaced by instructors of college courses is the choice of a textbook. For many years, instructors of introductory courses in the education of behaviorally disor dered/emotionally disturbed children had few textbooks from which to choose. Today there are a large number of introductory textbooks, and making an intelligent choice is more difficult than it once was. Gillen (1973) has identified some of the important characteristics which should be given consideration in text selection. He mentions cost, subject matter coverage, availability of teaching aids, reading ease, and human interest. Cost changes quickly, and availability of teaching aids differ from one institution to another. Therefore, these two factors are best evaluated by each individual instructor in the context of a specific teaching environment and student body. Information about coverage, reading ease, and human interest, however, could be compiled and should be of considerable interest to instructors who are attempting to choose a textbook. Traditionally, reading ease has been measured by the use of a number of popular readability formulae. One widely used method was developed by Flesch (1949, 1951) and includes a measure of interest as well as a readability measure which makes use of word and sentence length. Most readability formulae make use of sentence length since it is regarded as one of the best predictors of readability (Gillespie-Sil ver, 1979). Smith (1976) has pointed out other factors which influence readability, but formulae which make use of sentence length are considered adequate to compare readability of passages from different sources (Glazer, 1974). The Flesch formula for estimating the interest level of printed material is much less dependable. Obviously, no mathematical method for determining the interest of a printed passage can be highly accurate, since what is interesting varies greatly from person to person. The Flesch formula for human interest makes use of the number of "personal" words in the passage being measured. Personal words are first-, second-, and third-person pronouns (except neuter pronouns) which refer to things rather than people, as well as all words that have masculine or feminine natural gender (Flesch, 1949,1951). The more such words in a given passage, the more interesting it is judged to be. The validity of scores derived through the use of this formula is obviously open to question, but might be useful in the absence of a better way to measure interest. There have been a number of studies in which the Flesch formulae were used to study college textbooks for a variety of courses. Gillen (1973) used the formulae to study the 124 February 1986 Behavioral Disorders This content downloaded from 157.55.39.138 on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 05:50:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms readability and interest of introductory psychology texts. Hoffman and Vyhonsky (1975) reported on textbooks for educational psychology courses, and Hirshoren, Hunt, and Kavale (1976) reported similar data for introductory special education textbooks published between 1970and 1975. Maddux, Irons, Candler, & Irons (1983) brought the latter data up to date by studying special education textbooks published between 1974 and 1982. Maddux and Candler (in press) analyzed, textbooks for courses in the education of gifted and talented children. These authors also charted the subject areas covered in each textbook. In general, the above studies revealed a surprising disparity within each discipline in readabil ity, interest, and coverage in the textbooks which were analyzed. The purpose of the present study was to determine Flesch readability and interest scores for textbooks intended for use in courses on the education of children with behavioral disorders and/or emotional disturbance. In addition, the subject matter coverage of text books were analyzed and charted. Such data should be of considerable interest and utility to instructors who must select textbooks.