graphic of Page from Bicycle Owner's Manual

A somewhat more difficult task (with a difficulty value of 318) involves an article about cotton diapers and directs the reader to "list three reasons why the author prefers to use disposable rather than cotton diapers." This task is made more difficult because of several of our process variables. First, type of match was scored a 5 because the reader had to provide multiple responses, each of which required a text-based inference. Nowhere in the text does the author say, "I prefer cotton diapers because …" These inferences are made somewhat more difficult because the type of information being requested is a "reason" rather than something more concrete. This variable received a score of 4. Finally, plausibility of distractor was scored a 3 because the text contains information that may serve to distract the reader.