A Formula for Predicting the Comprehension Level of Material to be Presented Orally

Abstract

A total of 456 teachers, secondary students, and elementary students from nine public schools in a southeastern state took part in the study. The authors produced an operational definition for environmental robustness or the relative dramatic content of school structures. It was composed of 10 semantic differential pairs able to discriminate dramatic content and representative of a single factor measuring about two-thirds of the test variance for the concept "dramatic." The 10 pairs demonstrated a degree of test-retest reliability both as individual items and combined as a total instrument score using a new sample of 84 secondary school students from the same area. As predicted and with this same sample of 84 students, the mean environmental robustness score for students holding a positive evaluation of their school was significantly higher than the mean robustness score for students holding a neutral or negative evaluation of their school.