Appendix 4 - Training Material Review

Review of Food Safety Training Materials

Five training manuals or workbooks were collected, reviewed and analyzed for design and readability for a diverse audience. The audience could be those with:

• limited literacy and language skills.
• time constraints.
• pursuing a program of self-study.
• different learning style preferences.

Readability Criteria

Readability formulas or software were not used to analyze the readability because they are limited to measuring only the relative difficulty of the text. By themselves, they are not adequate in determining a match between the reading level of written material and the 'reading with understanding' level of the reader. In addition, the analysis is best done on connected and flowing text and the training material has short sentences and many vertical lists. For the purposes of this study, the criteria for examining the readability of the training materials follow the principles of plain language. Therefore, the guideposts for assessment were based on the layout, organization, format, appearance and design, sentence structure, paragraph structure, vocabulary and a glossary of terms – to mention some. (Appendix 3 for criteria)