tested PIRLS RLT
Test version Linguistic
characteristic Informativetexts Literary texts Total
Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD
Dutch passages N Words 629 131 673 140 651 133
N Characters 3043 612 2988 596 3015 585 Word Length 4.8 0.1 4.4 0.1 4.6 0.2 Sentence Length 12.9 1.9 12.0 2.3 12.4 2.1 English N Words 618 130 641 126 629 124 passages N Characters 2797 567 2755 504 2776 519 Word Length 4.5 0.1 4.3 0.1 4.4 0.2 Sentence Length 12.6 2.0 11.5 2.4 12.0 2.2
Dutch items N Words 450 72 433 75 441 72
N Characters 1982 309 1782 317 1882 320 Word Length 4.4 0.1 4.1 0.1 4.3 0.2
English items N Words 405 86 414 82 410 81
N Characters 1758 299 1614 313 1686 305 Word Length 4.4 0.5 3.9 3.8 4.1 0.5 Separate two (Type of text: literary vs. informative) by two (Language: Dutch vs. English) analyses of variance were performed on the number of words in the
passages and the number of words in the items, respectively. The same analyses
were also performed on the number of characters in the passages and the number of characters in the items. The main effect of Language on the number of words in the items was significant (F(1,14) = 12.91, p < .01), while the main effect of Language on the number of words in the passages was not (F(1,14) = 1.70, p > .05). Relatively more words were thus used in the Dutch items but not in the Dutch passages. The main effects of Language on the number of characters in the items (F(1,14) = 77.80,
p < .001) and the passages (F(1,14) = 9.86, p < .01) were also found to be
significant. More characters were thus used in the Dutch passages and items than in the English passages and items, respectively. The main effect of Type of text was not found to be significant in any of the analyses, which shows the number of words and characters in the passages and items do not differ for the literary versus informative texts. A significant interaction between Language and Type of text was also not detected (p > .05), which shows the differences according to language to hold across the different types of text.
A two (Type of text: literary vs. informative) by two (Language: Dutch vs. English) analysis of variance was next performed on the mean number of characters per word (mean word length) for the text passages. The main effect of Language on mean word length for the passages was significant (F(1,14) = 68.32, p < .001). The average word length for the Dutch passages was significantly higher than for the English passages. The main effect of Type of text was also significant (F(1,14) =
33.60, p < .001), which suggests that the mean word length for informative texts was significantly higher than for literary texts. However, a significant interaction between Language and Type of text was also found (F(1, 14) = 9.66, p < .01). That is, the difference between the Dutch and English versions of the test was significantly larger for the informative texts than for the literary texts with the mean word length for the Dutch informative texts proving highest, followed by the English informative texts, the Dutch literary texts, and then the English literary texts. A Multiple Comparison analysis (Bonferroni corrected) showed all of the differences to be significant at the .01 level, with the exception of the difference between the English informative texts and the Dutch literary texts and the difference between the Dutch literary texts and the English literary texts, which were both non-significant (p > .05).
When the mean word length for the items from the different versions of the RLT was analyzed, the main effect of Language was non-significant (p > .05), but the main effect of Type of text was significant (F(1,14) = 15.37, p < .01). The informative items contained longer words on average than the literary items. The interaction between Language and Type of text was not significant (p > .05).
The mean number of words per sentence (mean sentence length) for the different text passages was analyzed next. One passage was not included in the analyses because the passage was a leaflet that contained considerable information in tables and relatively few sentences. A two (Type of text: literary vs. informative) by two (Language: Dutch vs. English) analysis of variance was thus performed on the number of words per sentence for the 15 remaining passages. Neither the main effect of Language (F(1,13) = 1.30, p > .05) nor the main effect of Type of text (F < 1) was significant. The interaction effect between Language and Type of text was also not significant (F < 1.0). The mean sentence length for the items is not presented because each item consisted of only one or two sentences, which is not sufficient to create a mean. The correlations between the number of words used in the Dutch and English versions of the text passages and items were both highly significant
(Pearson’s r = .87, p < .001 and r = .89, p < .001 respectively). The correlations between the number of characters in the Dutch and English versions of the text
passages and items were also highly significant (r = .86, p < .001 and r = .96, p <
.001 respectively). When a greater number of words and characters was used in English, thus, a greater number of words and characters was also used in Dutch. The mean word length for the Dutch passages also increased linearly with the mean word length for the English passages (r = .83, p < .001), but no significant correlation was found between the mean word length for the Dutch items and the mean word length for the English items (r = .39, p > .05). Finally, the correlation between the mean sentence length for the Dutch passages and the English passages was highly significant (r = .84, p < .001).
In sum, the Dutch version of the test was found to have more words, more
characters, and longer words on average than the English version. The mean word length was also generally longer for the informative texts than for the literary texts,