Reading, readability, and legibility research: implications for notification letters.
This article defines communication science and then briefly describes three research areas relevant to worker notifications: (1) receiving of notification messages, (2) reading and understanding of notification messages, and (3) influences or effects of notification messages on workers. Next, the article focuses on the reading and legibility research relevant to worker notifications and then provides 16 guidelines for drafting worker notifications. Finally, the article suggests evaluating draft notifications by using one or more of the following: skilled editorial reviews, readability scoring, Cloze techniques, signal stopping techniques, in-depth personal interviews, focus groups, and usability testing.
Zimmerman
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Dept. of Technical Journalism, Colorado State University, Fort Collins 80523.
D017007:Duty to Warn; D006801:Humans; D016272:Occupational Health; D012106:Research; D012306:Risk; D014956:Writing