Item by Item Review

In the following review, we will analyze and rate some form-filling tasks for complexity using the tables and rubrics at the end of the first section. Other tasks clearly fit the descriptions given for complexity Level 1; these will be identified as such without a detailed rating. You can review the descriptions for Level 1 prose, document, and quantitative tasks on pages 95-118.

The first task, at the top of the form is a direction to the respondent to “See the instructions on page 2.” This is an extremely easy ‘locate’ with no distractors and clearly a Level 1 document use task. Note that we are not concerned about whether the instructions are hard to read, just whether they can be found. At a later time we may ask a question about the instructions. The way the instructions are organized and the language they use will affect the complexity of matching and extracting the information from them.