Cloze testing for user comprehension
Cloze testing, also called a Cloze Deletion Test, is a method for testing content comprehension by providing a “fill in the blanks” scenario. It’s a validation method to ensure your content makes sense to average people—or whatever audience your product serves.
Reading comprehension is different from readability. People might understand the words we’re using, but what inferences and meaning do they take away when they’re combined into sentences? This test explores whether people are able to fill in the blanks to complete sentences with missing words based on their contextual understanding of the surrounding words.
How to run a Cloze test
To start, choose a text passage of at least a few sentences. Since UI text is often very short, it can be difficult to find lengthier copy to test. This method works best for marketing, legal, and support text that appears in longer blocks.
Replace every Nth word with blanks. A typical test uses N = 5. To make the test easier, you would increase the number of words you show before using a blank (higher N).
Ask your test users to fill in the blanks with their best guesses for the missing words.
The score is the percentage of correctly guessed words. 60% or higher is considered a “passing” score.
Per NN/g, because you’re testing comprehension rather than spelling skills, synonyms and misspellings count as correct entries. Here’s an NN/g example using Facebook’s privacy policy:
Answers for the curious:
{1} track, {2} you, {3} adding, {4} or, {5} photo, {6} another, {7} post, {8} with, {9} you, {10} when, {11} to, {12} share, {13} storing, {14} we, {15} you
If users got at least 9 of 15 correct (60%), then we could assume this content is comprehensible for the target audience.
Many content strategists consider Cloze Testing to be the most valuable test they run for longer form content.
So! You just learned a ton of content testing methods. Great job, and now let’s take a quiz for review and do some practice work.
-UX Writer’s Collective
