The SMOG Readability Formula

Step 1: Count 10 consecutive sentences at the beginning, middle, and end of a passage, for a total of 30 sentences. Sentences are considered to be independent units of thought that end with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Step2: In these sentences, count every word that has three or more syllables. Include numbers in the way they are sounded out. For example, 1915 would have four syllables. Step 3: Estimate the square root of the number of polysyllabic words in the count. This can be done by calculator, or estimated by taking the square root of the nearest perfect square. For instance, if the number of words is 95, the nearest perfect square is 100. If the word count falls about midpoint between two perfect squares, choose the lower number. For example, if the number of words is 110, figure the square root of 100 rather than 121. Step 4: Add 3 to the estimated square root to get the SMOG grade. The SMOG grade is the grade reading level.

SMOG Conversion Table Total Polysyllabic Word Count 1-6 7 - 12 13 - 20 21 - 30 31 - 42 43 - 56 57 - 72 73 - 90 91 - 110 111 - 132 133 - 156 157 - 182 183 - 210 211 - 240 Approximate Grade Level (+1.5 Grades) 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

INTRODUCTION Pneumonia, diarrhea, dengue hemorrhagic fever, malaria, measles, and malnutrition cause more than 70% of deaths in children under five years of age. There are feasible and effective ways that health worker in health centers can care for children with these illnesses and prevent most deaths brought by these illnesses. WHO and UNICEF used updated technical findings to describe the management of these illnesses in a set of integrated guidelines, instead of separate guidelines for each illness. They then developed this training package to teach the integrated case management process to health workers who attend to sick children. Health workers have experienced treating common childhood illnesses. They are often trained using separate, disease-specific guidelines such as guidelines for treating malaria, or guidelines for managing diarrhea. However, they may have difficulty combining different guidelines when caring for a sick child with several problems. They may not know which problems are most important to treat. With limited time and available drugs, health workers may not be able to identify and treat all of a sick childs problems. There are important relationships between the illnesses. For examples repeated diarrheal episodes often lead to malnutrition, while diarrhea which often accompanies or follows measles is particularly severe. Therefore, effective case management needs to consider all of a childs symptoms. A health worker can follow the integrated case management process taught in this course to quickly consider all of a childs symptoms and not overlook any problems. The health worker can determine if a child is severely ill and needs urgent referral. If not, the health worker can follow the guidelines to treat the childs illnesses. The guidelines also describe counseling for mothers and other health workers. The case management guidelines incorporate existing WHO and national guidelines, such as those for managing diarrheal disease, acute respiratory infections, malaria, measles, dengue hemorrhagic fever, nutrition and for immunization. In this course, health workers will see how the disease-specific guidelines fit into a more comprehensive and efficient process for management of a sick child. The case management guidelines describe how to care for a child who presents at a health center with an illness for the first time or for a schedule follow-up visit to check the childs

improvement. They address most but not all of the major reasons a child is brought to a health center for illness. A child returning with chronic problems or less common illnesses may require special care which is not described in this course. The course does not describe the management of trauma or other acute emergencies due to accidents or injuries. Case management can be effective only to the extent that families bring their sick children to a trained health worker for care in a timely way. If a family waits to bring a child to health center until the child is extremely sick or takes the child to an untrained health provider, the child is more likely to die from the illness. Therefore, teaching families when to seek care for sick child is an important part of the case management process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: This chapter will describe and allow you to practice the following skills: Asking the mother about the childs problem. Checking the general danger signs.

*The words highlighted in red have three or more syllables. The total number of words that has three or more syllables is 97. The estimated perfect square is 100. 100 + 3 = 103; Therefore, the estimated grade level is 13.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Joven E., Damian J., et al (2011). Integrated Management of Childhood Illness Resource Manual and Workbook . Philippines: C&E Publishing , Inc.

Flesch Reading Ease Formula

Step 1: For short writings, take 3 or 4 samples of approximately 100 words each. For a book, take 25 to 30 samples. Each sample starts at the beginning of a paragraph. Step 2: Figure the number of sentences in the samples by counting independent units of thought marked by punctuation like periods, question marks, colons, and semi-colons. The last sentence should be the one that ends closest to the 100 word count, making your sample slightly more or less than 100 words. Step 3: Count the number of words in each sentence in the sample, figuring numbers, contractions, and hyphenated words as one word each. Step 4: Calculate average sentence length (SL) by counting the number of words in each sample and dividing by the number of sentences. Step 5: Count the number of syllables in your 100 word samples. Reading aloud will help you determine the syllables, especially in numbers. For example, 1915 would have four syllables. Step 6: Calculate average word length (WL) by dividing the number of syllables by the number of words in your sample and multiplying by 100. Step 7: Insert your SL number and WL number into this Reading Ease formula: RE= 206.835 0.846 WL 1.015 SL

Calculations:

Average sentence length (SL) = number of words/number of sentences = 2728/126 = 21.65079365

Average word length (WL)

= number of syllables/ number of words = 4613/2728 = 1.690982405

Reading Ease (RE)

= 206.835 84.6 WL - 1.015 SL = 206.835 84.6 (1.690982405) 1.015 (21.65079365) = 41.80233298 or 42

* Reading difficulty level is Difficult, Grade level is College.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pilliteri, A. (2007). Maternal and Child Health Nursing: Care of Childbearing and Childrearing Family. Philippines: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Interpreting Flesch Reading Ease Scores

Reading Ease Score

Reading Difficulty Level

Grade Level

90-100

Very Easy

80-90

Easy

70-80

Fairly Easy

60-70

Standard

8-9

50-60

Fairly Difficult

10-12

30-50

Difficult

College

0-30

Very Difficult

Postgraduate