Assessing the Complexity of Literacy Tasks
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Exercise 6 - Answers

  1. The first few items are simple locate items where the form filler locates the label and enters information that matches the label. All are at level 1.

Department; Time of fire, AM/PM, Day of week, date; Federal gov. loss - buildings, contents, other

The ‘total’ label in the middle of the row indicates a mathematical operation; addition (1). Numbers in a row; (0); numbers are adjacent (0); labels and amounts identified without a search (0); operation is identified with the word ‘total’ (0); numbers entered in previous task (1); no transformation (0); total rating (1). There does not appear to be any plausible distractors (the non-government losses appear after the total box).

Two ‘locate and enter’ tasks end the row. Both are at level 1.
Loss other than Federal Government; Loss covered by insurance.

The fourth row has two similar items asking for the number of deaths and injuries in five named categories (a nested list structure). We can assume that the numbers are available and have only to be matched to the correct label. This task requires matching two terms, the first either death or injury and the second one of firefighters, men, women, children or unknown.

The tiny print in the fifth row asks for the principal use for the building and gives examples of acceptable responses. Reading this item is more difficult than the actual task of providing the information. This is locate and enter at level 1.

The sixth row asks for the year of construction, if known. Again a level 1 locate and enter task.

Type
Quant.

Level
1

ToO
1

SoO
1

PoD
1

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