Investigating the relationship between font and text comprehension among upper secondary school students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21030/anyp.2023.2.1Keywords:
font, text comprehension, recall of information, upper secondary school studentsAbstract
The basic question of the research is the role of font choice in the comprehension and recall of a text among upper secondary school students. The hypothesis of the study is that a text written with a serif font has a more positive effect on the comprehension and recall of information than text written with a sans serif font. There is no consensus in the literature on this issue. In the past, it was mainly the readability of fonts from a screen that was measured, typically among adults. This research used a test of reading comprehension in a serif (Cambria) and a sans-serif (Candara) font. A total of 450 upper secondary school students took part in the study, in which reading the text was followed by a reading comprehension test, and two weeks later 196 students completed a recall test of 5-5 questions. The aim of the test was to assess whether the recall of information was more effective for the serif or the sans-serif text. A two-sample paired t-test was used to compare the results of the text comprehension and recall tests. No significant difference was found between the results. The hypotheses were not confirmed: neither comprehension nor recall of information was improved for upper-grade students when text was written in a serif font.
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