Seven text features that make evaluation items hard to read

A checklist of the seven text features that Lenzner, Kaczmirek and Lenzner (2010) found add cognitive burden to survey questions, with a plain fix for each. It is for anyone writing or reviewing course evaluation items, especially in multilingual cohorts. Run each item through it before the evaluation goes out, then pretest with a few students. Koji follow-ups can show when students read an item differently.

What's in this checklist

• Low-frequency words: swap jargon for the words students use
• Vague relative terms: replace often or appropriate with something concrete
• Vague noun phrases: name the thing, such as the weekly lecture recordings
• Complex syntax: one short sentence in the active voice
• Working memory overload: no item that needs several facts held at once
• Low syntactic redundancy: break up dense strings of nouns
• Bridging inferences: state the link the student would otherwise have to guess