Abstract
The Iowa Silent Reading Test (ISRT), Level 2, Form E, Test 2 (Reading Comprehension) Part A was used to assess 70 participants' reading comprehension skills prior to performing a sequence of tasks in a series of seven printer usability studies (10 participants per printer). This part of the ISRT measures a person's ability to answer questions based on short passages to which the participant has ready access, and requires 26 minutes to administer. Data were collected to provide local norms for future studies, and for use as a covariate if necessary. The participants for these studies were obtained through a temporary employment agency. The distribution of scores for these participants is provided in this paper to describe local norms for this type of population, commonly used in such industrial usability studies. The predictive validity of this test score for the overall percentage of tasks successfully completed was found to be significant (r = .25, p = .035). The predictive validity of the ISRT score for ratings of satisfaction with user documentation was also significant (r = .35, p = .0028). Analysis of variance results suggested that participants with better reading comprehension skill generally performed better and were more critical of the user documentation.
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