Seven passages of a published reading comprehension test were administered to college students to compare the regular multiple chioce test scores with scores on two forms of a cloze test, standard blank and dash (dashed-line) blank, and with readability formula values. The mean on the dash form was significantly higher than on the standard form and subjects' scores on both were significantly related to their scores on the multiple choice test. Regression equations were derived to predict multiple choice scores from cloze scores. At the passage level, mean scores on (both) cloze forms correlated with readability values, but multiple choice means were correlated with neither. In a supplementary study college students answered the multiple choice questions without reading the passages, in order to determine prior knowledge on each passage. When the multiple choice scores were corrected for this, they correlated positively with scores on both forms of the cloze test and with readability values.
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