Readability and academic communication: The case of the humanities research articles in University of Cape Coast

Abstract

Research articles (RA) constitute the most important means of communicating research findings in the academic community. Despite the crucial role played by RAs within the academic community, numerous studies across the world have shown that RAs are difficult to read and understand. In Ghana, there has not been any earlier works to evaluate the readability of RAs. The objective of this study was to explore the level of readability of RAs produced by lecturers in the Faculty of Arts in the University of Cape Coast. The descriptive research design was used and the stratified random sampling technique was employed to collect 100 RAs across the eight (8) departments of the Faculty of Arts. Readability scores were computed using Flesch reading ease (FRE) and Flesch Kincaid – grade level (FKGL) indexes. With the help of SPSS (version 23.0) measures of central tendencies and dispersions, frequencies and percentage distributions, Wilcoxon signed ranked test, Kruskal – Wallis H test, Mann-Whitney U test and Spearman rho and phi correlation coefficient were used to analyse the data. The results showed that a majority (63%) of the research articles were graded as ‘difficult’ to read; that is, above the ‘standard’ readability level of 60 when measured on the FRE scale. In addition, Mann-Whitney U test showed that males and female researchers write RAs with equal readability level. The study further revealed a positive relationship between readability and text comprehension. To improve the readability of RAs in the Faculty Arts, the study recommended among others, that, researchers in the faculty should cut down on the excessive use of polysyllabic words and complex grammatical structures especially in the Departments of Music and Dance, and English.