A school text book analysis

This paper reports on a project to digitise and analyse sample reading books recently used within British Primary schools. Through analysis of the textual content of example texts from this corpus, we aimed to illustrate statistical characteristics of these texts and consider implications for the expected rate of progression across texts intended for different school levels. Our project also includes the design and implementation of software tools for assisting with this undertaking. Our approach to textual analysis relies heavily on frequency lists for each of the school text books and their comparison with frequency lists of common usage (words per million) derived from the British National Corpus. Our software toolset eases the task of contrastive analysis as well as providing helpful graphical display of analysis data

Improving Manual and Automated Text Simplification

In an effort to make information more accessible, our team set out to refine and update a set of guidelines for clear writing and develop an initial paired text dataset to be used for improving automated text simplification. The simplification of text allows for more effective and efficient processing of textual content and the ability to automatically simplify text can make the web more accessible to everyone. Automated text simplifiers require a large dataset of paired text in order to be significantly useful. Our team partnered with IBM, UMass Boston, and UMass Medical School to create an initial dataset for automated text simplification using a refined set of operationalized guidelines for manual simplification and develop a methodology for expanding the dataset

Exploring the Readability of Ingredients Lists of Food Labels with Existing Metrics

Healthy diet and dietary behaviors are key components in prevention of chronic disease and management of chronic illness. Nutritional literacy has been associated with dietary behaviors and consumer choice of healthy foods. Nutritional literacy can be measured, for example, by examining consumer food label use, but current research focuses largely on the Nutrition Facts panel of a food product. Ingredients lists are critical for communicating food composition but are relatively unstudied in existing literature. The goal of this work is to measure the readability of ingredients lists on branded food products in the United States using existing metrics. We examined ingredients lists for all 495,646 products listed in the USDA Food Data Central database using four existing readability measures for text written in natural language. Each of these indices approximates the grade level that would be expected to comprehend a text; comparatively, patient consent forms are considered acceptable at an 8th grade reading level or lower. We report a broad variability for in readability using different metrics: ingredients lists recorded at a 9th grade reading level or higher to comprehend are found at rates of 16.5% (Automated Reading Index) to 74.9% (Gunning-Fog Index). Ingredients lists recorded at a 10th grade reading level or higher to comprehend are found at rates of 84.2% (using FRE Index). These results demonstrate the need to further explore how ingredients lists can be measured for readability, both for the purposes of consumer understanding as well as for supporting future nutrition research involving text mining

Saying more with less? Disclosure conciseness, completeness and balance in Integrated Reports

The Integrated Reporting Framework of 2013 represents the latest international attempt to connect a firm’s financial and sustainability (i.e., environmental, social and governance) performance in one company report. An Integrated Report (IR) should communicate “concisely” about how a firm’s strategy, governance, performance and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of sustainable value. At the same time, an IR needs to be “complete and balanced”, i.e., broadly including all material matters, both positive and negative, in a balanced way. Drawing on impression management studies, we examine a selection of performance determinants to gain insights into the factors associated with conciseness, completeness and balance in IR. The results from a sample of IR early adopters show that in the presence of a firm’s weak financial performance, the IR tends to be significantly longer and less readable (i.e., less concise), and more optimistic (i.e., less balanced). We additionally find that firms with worse social performance provide reports that are foggier (i.e., less concise) and with less information on their sustainability performance (i.e., less complete). Our evidence implies that IR early adopters employ quantity and syntactical reading ease manipulation as well as thematic content and verbal tone manipulation as impression management strategies. The results also suggest that such strategies depend not only on the level of firms’ performance but also on the type of performance (financial versus nonfinancial/sustainability). This paper adds to the limited literature on IR in sustainability accounting as well as to the research in mainstream financial accounting that examines disclosure quality using textual analysis

Environmental Health Information on the Internet: Development of an Appropriate Website Evaluation Tool

Purpose: This research aimed to determine how health communication, risk communication, and website evaluation criteria could be utilized to evaluate environmental health information on the Internet.Public Health Significance: Concerns exist about the quality of health information on the Internet. Environmental health plays a considerable role in public health but can be difficult to communicate effectively, especially in a dynamic and diverse system like the Internet. An evaluation tool tailored specifically for environmental public health messages on the Internet should be developed to assess the quality of those sites.Methods: A literature review identified previous website evaluation tools and general health and risk communication techniques. Using those tools as a framework, a website evaluation tool tailored for assessing environmental health information on the Internet was developed. In order to pilot test this tool, five government websites and one emerging environmental health issue, particulate matter (PM), were selected and evaluated.Results: The key criteria identified in the literature review and incorporated into the website evaluation tool included: Basic Website Information, Content (with subsections: Scope, Accuracy, Risk Communication, Authority, Up-to-Date, Links, and Writing Quality), Appearance/Layout, Purpose/Audience, and Access/Use.The website evaluation tool showed considerable practicality and ease of use in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the five websites during the pilot testing. The Environmental Protection Agency's website received the highest overall score and in the content section. The Kansas Department of Health and the Environment's website received the lowest scores in most of the evaluation categories and overall. None of the websites passed the tool's readability criteria. Conclusions: Consensus exists regarding the need for evidence-based and validated website evaluation tools. A tool developed by consolidating communication recommendations from varying fields of study provides researchers throughout the interdisciplinary field of public health with a research base and evaluation framework for future Internet-based environmental health communication projects. Additionally, the organizations responsible for the pilot-tested websites can use the individualized results from the evaluations to improve and guide their online environmental health communication efforts

expectations, communication and transparency

Thesis(Doctoral) -- KDI School: Ph.D in Public Policy, 2022The conduct of monetary policy has greatly evolved in the past two decades, particularly because monetary authorities have become more transparent and are communicating monetary policy issues to the public more than before. Most central banks have reformed into either de jure or de facto inflation targeting frameworks, with intensified efforts to influence inflation expectations. The discussion in this dissertation is three-pronged. Chapter 1 explores the behavioral aspect of economic agents in forming inflation expectations by utilizing threshold models and time-varying Granger causality techniques in the context of lag-augmented vector autoregressive models to establish the extent to which inflation expectations may have a non-linear relationship with their predictors and whether inflation expectations can be adequately predicted. Chapter 2 discusses monetary policy communication, precisely by utilizing the text mining algorithms to extract the levels of readability, complexity, and sentiment contained in the monetary policy statements and further test how these indicators are related to financial market variables’ volatilities. Finally, chapter 3 attempts to understand how monetary policy transparency may affect the stability of the banking system. I find that economic agents might not revise their inflation expectations until the inflation target is missed beyond some threshold. I further find that credibility of the central bank, changes in the policy rate and missing of the inflation target by the central bank may provide insights on how economic agents would form their expectations about inflation in the future. I also find that small misses of inflation target do not trigger the revision of inflation expectations by the economic agents. There is evidence suggesting that the readability and complexity of monetary policy statements may affect exchange rate volatility in developing countries, and the tone of a central bank's statements regarding overall macroeconomic conditions matters for financial market volatility. Finally, I find evidence to suggest that banking industry stability could be influenced by how transparent a central bank is, particularly on issues related to explicit announcement of policy rules, provision of a comprehensive account of monetary policy deliberations, and disclosure of how each decision was reached.- Chapter 1: Two Decades of Targeting Inflation in South Africa: What are the Dynamics of Inflation Expectations? - Chapter 2: Effects of Monetary Policy Communication on Key Financial Variables in Developing Countries (co-authored by Iegor Vyshnevskyi) - Chapter 3: Dose Monetary Policy Transparency Matter for Banking System Stability? (co-authored by Wook Sohn)doctoralpublishedWytone Yohane JOMB

Readability and content analysis of lifestyle education resources for weight management in Australian general practice

© 2016 El-Haddad et al. Background: Weight management education is one of the key strategies to assist patients to manage their weight. Educational resources provide an important adjunct in the chain of communication between practitioners and patients. However, one in five Australian adults has low health literacy. The purpose of this study was to assess the readability and analyse the content of weight management resources. Methods: This study is based on the analysis of 23 resources found in the waiting rooms of ten Sydney-based general practices and downloaded from two clinical software packages used at these practices. The reading grade level of these resources was calculated using the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Fry Readability Graph, and the Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook. Resources' content was analysed for the presence of dietary, physical activity, and behaviour change elements, as recommended by the Clinical practice guidelines for the management of overweight and obesity in adults, adolescents, and children in Australia. Results: The resources' average reading grade level was for a 10th grader (9.5 ± 1.8). These findings highlight that the average reading grade level was two grades higher than the recommended reading grade level for health education resources of 8th grade level or below. Seventy percent of resources contained dietary and behaviour change elements. Physical activity was included in half of the resources. Two messages were identified to be inconsistent with the guidelines and three messages had no scientific basis. Conclusion: A body of evidence now exists that supports the need to develop evidence-based education resources for weight management that place low demand on literacy, without compromising content accuracy. The findings from this study suggest that there is significant room for improvement in the educational resources provided in general practices

Development and preliminary testing of the psychosocial adjustment to hereditary diseases scale

Background: The presence of Lynch syndrome (LS) can bring a lifetime of uncertainty to an entire family as members adjust to living with a high lifetime cancer risk. The research base on how individuals and families adjust to genetic-linked diseases following predictive genetic testing has increased our understanding of short-term impacts but gaps continue to exist in knowledge of important factors that facilitate or impede long-term adjustment. The failure of existing scales to detect psychosocial adjustment challenges in this population has led researchers to question the adequate sensitivity of these instruments. Furthermore, we have limited insight into the role of the family in promoting adjustment. Methods: The purpose of this study was to develop and initially validate the Psychosocial Adjustment to Hereditary Diseases (PAHD) scale. This scale consists of two subscales, the Burden of Knowing (BK) and Family Connectedness (FC). Items for the two subscales were generated from a qualitative data base and tested in a sample of 243 participants from families with LS. Results: The Multitrait/Multi-Item Analysis Program-Revised (MAP-R) was used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the PAHD. The findings support the convergent and discriminant validity of the subscales. Construct validity was confirmed by factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha supported a strong internal consistency for BK (0.83) and FC (0.84). Conclusion: Preliminary testing suggests that the PAHD is a psychometrically sound scale capable of assessing psychosocial adjustment. We conclude that the PAHD may be a valuable monitoring tool to identify individuals and families who may require therapeutic interventions

Three essays on banking and central banking

Thesis(Doctoral) -- KDI School: Ph.D in Public Policy, 2022This dissertation studies banking and central banking from different perspectives, such as credit risk and monetary policy. Chapter 1 examines bank-specific factors such as related party lending, large exposure concentrations, and capitalization that determine nonperforming loans (NPLs) in Ukraine. It is demonstrated that banks’ NPL stock increases with related party lending, and this association depends on the banks’ ownership type and size in the case of the Ukraine banking system. For the study, we built a quarterly panel of 207 bank financial indicators and utilized dynamic panel fixed effects and panel VAR models. Chapter 2 examines the effect of monetary policy statements’ readability and complexity on financial markets in developing countries. We built a unique dataset for 21 countries over an 11-year horizon and applied text analysis and a panel fixed effects estimator to find that poorly readable and complex monetary policy statements are associated with higher foreign exchange rate volatility. Chapter 3 studies the impact of monetary policy transparency on inflation for 34 developing countries from 1998 to 2019, taking into account their monetary policy independence and stance. A median quantile regression with fixed effects analysis revealed that higher MPT is associated with lower inflation in the following period for countries with either tight monetary policy or independent monetary policy controlling for its tight regime.- Chapter 1: Nonperforming Loans, Related Lending, and Bank Capitalization: Evidence from Ukraine (co-authored by Wook Sohn) - Chapter 2: Monetary Policy Communication on Key Financial Variables in Developing Countries (co-authored by Wytone Yohane Jombo) - Chapter 3: Monetary Policy Transparency, Independence and Inflation in Developing CountriesdoctoralpublishedIegor VYSHNEVSKY

A study of the readability of University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service publications and leaflets for boys taking vocational agriculture in high school

Departments of Vocational Agriculture in Tennessee are organized under a plan whereby each individual teacher sets up his program of instruction based in part on the Supervised Farming Programs of the boys that he teaches, and the farm enterprises found in the community. In forming the program the teacher would also consider the needs of the community, the interests of the individuals receiving instruction and possible improvements needed in the existing farm programs in the community. This plan makes a variety of programs necessary because the agricultural situation is different in each community. Variation of agricultural programs in different communities may be due to soil conditions, custom of the farmers, tools that are available on the farms, markets, climate, topography, knowledge that the farmers possess, and other factors. Because this wide difference in teaching programs exists, the source of teaching materials is one of the major problems of the Teacher of Vocational Agriculture. Because of the difference that exists in the programs, a text book as such is out of the question. Sources of information in general use are; Commercial books and publications used as reference material, farm magazines. Agricultural Education Publications, United States Department of Agriculture Farmers Bulletins, and other Federal Government Publications, Extension Service Material from adjoining states, University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service Publications and Leaflets, and University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins and Circulars. University of Tennessee Agricultural Extension Service Publications and Leaflets are written to carry information to the farmers of the State. University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletins and Circulars are written for research people trained agricultural personnel. Information from both is based on findings from various experiments and studies carried on by the Experiment Stations under the supervision of the University of Tennessee. The Extension Service Publications and Leaflets are written for use by farmers. They are based on Tennessee findings, written for our climate weather conditions and adapted to the general conditions of our State. Because of these reasons these publications are one of the principle sources of information being used in the teaching of Vocational Agriculture. Reading is one of the more important learning procedures. Its importance comes from the facts that there is a wide variety of written material that is available and because it is a method of self-education.To the Teacher of Vocational Agriculture it is of considerable importance in his program because he frequently has boys working on individual problems. The success of this learning process is entirely dependent on the ability of the boy to understand the available written material on the subject. Explanations of passages are possible but are necessarily limited to the lack of time of the teacher and the likelihood that the boy will not ask for help. To be able to understand what he reads a boy must have the ability to read. Next he must have material that is understandable for a person of his reading ability. This second factor has prompted this study