Abstract ABSTRACT: Accounting students are expected to acquire an ever-increasing amount of knowledge by reading and comprehending an ever-increasing number of textbooks and related materials. The purpose of this empirical study is (1) to introduce a psycholinguistic technique, the Cloze Procedure, to accounting educators and (2) to demonstrate how accounting educators can use this objective, valid, and easy-to-apply technique in their textbook selection and writing activities. In a field test conducted at two different universities, four intermediate accounting textbooks were tested, using the Cloze Procedure, for their level of understandability. Using one-way F-tests, evidence was found that the level of understandability varied significantly (1) among the four textbooks and (2) within the four textbooks. In addition, using a one-tailed Z-test with the Cloze Procedure's 44 percent criterion level, evidence was found that accounting students understood the four textbooks tested at the "instructional level."
Adelbery et al. (Sun,) studied this question.