Are Online Privacy Policies Readable?

This paper examines the question of are on-line privacy policies understandable to the users of the Internet? This examination is undertaken by collecting privacy policies from the most popular sites on the Internet, and analyzing their readability using a number of readability measures. The study finds that the results are consistent regardless of the readability measure utilized. The authors also compare their findings with the results from previous studies. The authors conclude that, on average, privacy policies are becoming more readable. However, these policies are still beyond the capability of a large section of Internet users, and roughly 20% of the policies require an educational level approaching a post-graduate degree to support comprehension.

Textual Segmentation: A Technique for Measuring Comprehension of Lengthy Prose

A simple technique for measuring comprehension of lengthy prose, i.e., consisting of multiple sentences, is presented. The “textual segmentation” procedure requires subjects to partition text into complete, meaningful units, such as paragraphs, chapters, and books. Very easy to prepare, administer, and score, textual segmentation has potentially wide application as a measure of reading comprehension, as a means for studying how people segment prose into paragraphs and the like, as a readability measure, as an instructional tool, and as a criterion for judging the success of text-reading and text-writing computer programs in research on artificial intelligence.