Development of the Portuguese version of a standardized reading test: the Radner-Coimbra Charts.
OBJECTIVE
To develop 27 short sentence optotypes for the Portuguese version of the Radner Reading Charts.


METHODS
Thirty-four Portuguese sentences were constructed following the concept of the Radner Reading Charts to obtain highly comparable sentences in terms of lexical difficulty, syntactical complexity, word length, number of syllables, and position of words. A long text (106 words) at the 5th grade reading level was also tested to assess the validity of the reading speeds obtained with the short sentences. The short sentences and long text were tested in 50 volunteers with similar educational backgrounds (mean age 30.98 years ± 6.99 years, range 19-47 years). Reading speeds were measured with a stop-watch and reported as words per minute (wpm). The reading time for each of the short sentences to be selected for the chart was defined as falling within the range of the mean ± 0.40 × standard deviation (SD).


RESULTS
The overall mean reading speed for each of the short sentences was 235.43 ± 36.39 wpm. The 27 sentences with a mean between 220.8 and 250.0 wpm (overall mean ± 0.40 × SD) were selected for construction of the reading charts. The mean reading speed for the long text was 212.42 ± 26.20 wpm. Correlation between the selected short sentences and long text was high (r =0.86). Reliability analysis yielded an overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.97.


CONCLUSIONS
The 27 short Portuguese sentences were highly comparable in terms of syntactical structure, number, position and length of words, lexical difficulty, and reading length. This reading test can overcome the limitations of the current tests for homogeneity and comparability, reducing subjectivity in the evaluation of the functional outcomes of medical and surgical ophthalmologic treatments.
Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal.|Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, Portugal.
Andreia Martins
AM
Rosa
Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, Portugal.
Cláudia Louro
CL
Farinha
Austrian Academy of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Austria.
Wolfgang
W
Radner
Department of Phoniatrics, Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
Gabriela
G
Diendorfer
Visual Neuroscience Laboratory, IBILI, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal.
Maria Fátima
MF
Loureiro
Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal.|Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, Portugal.
Joaquim Neto
JN
Murta
D000328:Adult; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011174:Portugal; D011932:Reading; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013997:Time Factors; D014787:Vision Tests / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards*; D014792:Visual Acuity