The development of a text leveling framework

In this study, reading theories and traditional text leveling systems were integrated and a text leveling framework comprising five aspects (i.e., print features, language and literary features, text structure, content, and diversity), 17 criteria, and 58 indicators was developed. Subsequently, 25 experts in the reading research and reading education fields were invited to assess the importance of these aspects, criteria, and indicators to text leveling. Data were analyzed using the analytic hierarchy process. The results show that content was the most critical aspect influencing text comprehensibility, followed by language and literary features, text structure, diversity, and print features. Overall, the five indicators in this framework with the highest global weight were truthfulness, consistency of perspective, number of perspectives, depth of concepts, and popular culture. Text length exhibited the lowest global weight. The text leveling framework established in this study includes all the major dimensions affecting comprehension and, through objectively quantifying the importance of leveling indicators, provides highly comprehensive text leveling.