atw: Re: Should we always give users what they ask for?
- From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 15:41:27 +1100
Hi Stuart,
The statistic was explained earlier. Two groups of people were given a text
to read. One text was in printed form; the other was read online. Both
groups were then given a set of questions about the text they had read (the
same set of questions). When repeated many times, the results was this:
those who read the printed text got more questions right. The difference
between the groups was 60%.
Cheers
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W: <http://www.abelard.com.au> www.abelard.com.au
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stuart Burnfield
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 3:21 PM
To: Austechwriter
Subject: atw: Re: Should we always give users what they ask for?
Sorry folks, pressed Send by mistake. I was going to finish off
by saying:
My feeling is that comprehension is a factor (of course),
reader preferences are a factor (of course), the environment
is a factor, the nature of the text or task is a factor...
So "always"? No. "reader preferences carry the day: yes or no?"
Maybe? Sometimes? It depends?
My main reservation about this thread is that I don't know how
much weight to put on the comprehension studies you cite.
"Up to 60%" isn't a statistic I can do anything with. What does
it mean?
- every subject's comprehension was worse and the worst of
the lot was 60% worse
- some were worse, some were better, but on average more
were worse
- results varied depending on the material, and for a particular
sort of material the readers' (reader's?) comprehension was
60% worse
Stuart
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