Assessing the Readability of Government Accounting Standards: The Cloze Procedure

Abstract

Studies assessing the readability of business writing typically use either readability formulas or, less often, the cloze procedure. This study argues that the cloze procedure, rather than a formula, is the appropriate method of assessing the readability of business writing and uses the cloze procedure to determine the readability of a statement issued by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). The GASB provides authoritative statements on the accounting required for local and state governments and agencies. The results indicate that one important GASB statement is unreadable by college-level readers. If this and other GASB statements are unreadable by the users of GASB pronouncements, the GASB may not be fulfilling its role of communicating governmental accounting principles.