Content area
Full text
The ease with which we can read a document constitutes readability. There have been several formulae developed to measure the readability of the written word. Semantic factors (the difficulty of words according to their length in characters or syllables) and syntactic factors (the difficulty of sentences according to their length in characters or words) constitute such formulae. The objective of this study was to compare the readability score of annual reports of banks on the basis of Bank's Size. The population consists of 20 Public sector banks & 15 private sector banks. Annual reports of three years for the banks were taken for the study. Hence the time period of the study is from 2009 to 2012. The annual reports for three years of all the banks taken up as sample were downloaded from the respective websites of each bank. Readability is calculated through Flesch Reading Ease in the annual report. The independent variable is size. The size is defined by log of total assets of banks. The hypotheses are tested through Independent T Test & Linear Regression. The results show that value of assets does not show any linear relationship with the readability scores of annual reports of banks. So the readability scores of banks cannot be compared on the basis of the size of the banks. Hence banks having bigger asset value or smaller asset value show its effect on readability scores of their annual reports to a small extent.
Key Words: Readability, Size, Assets, Flesh Kincaid Reading Ease
INTRODUCTION
As per the record of National Center for Health Statistics in 1998 46% of all accidental deaths of kids between 1 to 14 years of age are caused due to traffic accidents. (Johnston et al. 1994) presented that due to the inappropriate usage seats provided for safety of child tends to increase the chances of accidents. One more study (Kahane 1986) exhibited that, if the safety seats provided for children are used appropriately then the chances of injury in accidents reduces to 67%.
To understand readability in a more general sense, the National Adult Literacy Study mentions that the average adult in the United States (US) reads at the 7th grade level (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1993). Some health literacy experts...