Qualitative Review of Terminal Objectives in Reading. Professional Paper No. 21-74.

This paper describes the results of an effort to apply a classification system developed by the Human Resources Research Organization to a set of termanal objectives in reading. The classification system contained five factors, of three levels each. Some 312 terminal objectives and 766 approximations were classified by three raters. Agreement among raters was poor at the start of the rating, but improved dramatically with practice. It was concluded that: (1) classifying objectives is a useful procedure by which to evaluate their communicability, (2) the verb is probably the most important aspect of an objective, and (3) reading objectives are no more difficult to classify than are objectives in other instructional content areas. (Author)