Improving Cross-Cultural Psychometric Scales: A Focus on Readability

This study argues that readability formulas should be used as one measure of linguistic equivalence when adapting psychometric scales from one language to another. Assuming that the psychological structure being measured was not changed, it was observed that calculated readability levels and interpretations were different for two different languages. The level of readability should not be considered the sole criteria for linguistic equivalence studies; comprehensibility levels of the expressions in the text or scale should also be measured.