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Analysis demonstrates consistency in text complexity of political science articles across time and subfields, suggesting accessibility for educated readers.
This article analyzes the text complexity of political science research. Using automated text analysis, we examine the text complexity of a sample of articles from three leading generalist journals and four leading subfield journals. We also examine changes in text complexity across time by analyzing a sample of articles from the discipline’s flagship journal during a 100-year span. Although it is not surprising that a typical political science article is difficult to read, it is accessible to intelligent lay readers. We found little difference in text complexity across time or subfield.
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Cann et al. (2014) studied this question.
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