graphic of 2 charts showing increasing trends in: Fireworks Sales and Number of Fireworks Injuries in the Netherlands.

Another set of tasks covering a range of difficulty on the document scale involved a rather complicated document taken from a page in a consumer magazine rating clock radios. The easiest of the three tasks, receiving a difficulty value of 287, asks the reader: "Which two features are not on any basic clock radio?" In looking at the document, the reader has to cycle through the document to find the listing for basic clock radios and then determine that a dash represents the absence of a feature. The reader then has to locate the two features indicated by the set of dashes. As a result, type of match received a score of 4 because it is a cycle requiring multiple responses with a condition or low text-based inference. Type of information was scored a 2 because its features are attributes of the clock radio, and plausibility of distractor is a 2 because there are some characteristics that are not associated with other clock radios.

A somewhat more difficult task associated with this document received a difficulty value of 327 and asks the reader: "Which full-featured clock radio is rated highest on performance?" Here, the reader must make a three-feature match (full-featured, performance, and highest), where one of the features requires the reader to process conditional information. It is possible, for example, that some readers were able to find the full-featured clock radios and the column listed under performance but selected the first clock radio listed, assuming it was the one rated highest. In this case, they did not understand the conditional information, which is a legend stating what the symbols mean. Others may have gone to the column labeled "Overall Score" and found the highest numerical number and chosen the clock radio associated with it. For these reasons, type of match received a score of 4 and plausibility of distractor was scored a 3. Type of information received a 1 because the requested information is a thing.

The most difficult task associated with this document (with a difficulty value of 408) asks the reader to identify the average advertised price for the basic clock radio receiving the highest overall score. This task was made more difficult because the reader had to match four rather than three features; the reader also had to process conditional information, and there was a highly plausible distractor in the same node as the correct answer. As a result of these factors, type of match received a score of 5, type of information a score of 2, and plausibility of distractor a score of 5.