indexing word difficulty

[Hallowell, Brooke]

Dear colleagues:
We are working on deriving a list of "easy" and "difficult" words for an auditory comprehension study in American English.  As we're unaware of databases of words indexed by "difficulty," we are, as many have done, approximating an index of difficulty by using multiple indices, including word length,  familiarity, imageability, and frequency. Do know of a more index of word difficulty that more explicitly taps how hard it is to understand a word? Thanks very much for any suggestions.
Brooke Hallowell



Brooke Hallowell, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, F-ASHA
President, Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders
Professor and Director, Neurolinguistics Laboratory
Communication Sciences and Disorders
School of Rehabilitation and Communication Sciences
College of Health Sciences and Professions
W237 Grover Center
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
USA