George Roger Klare (April 17, 1922 – March 3, 2006) was a World War II veteran and a distinguished professor of psychology and dean at Ohio University.
He received a Regents Scholarship to the University of Nebraska, where he studied before being called into the Army Air Force in 1942.
[1] Following military and flight training, Klare served as a navigator on B-17 bombers in the Eighth Air Force in England.
[1] Klare later recounted his experiences as a prisoner of war in a chapter entitled "Questions" in Interrogations, Confessions, and Entrapment, published by Springer in 2004.
While on a railroad car en route to the Luftwaffe Interrogation Center, Klare survived a friendly-fire bombing in the rail yard in Fulda, Germany, the target on this third mission one week earlier.
Klare and his crew were ordered by a German guard to remove packages from the Fulda freight station that was on fire from the Allied bombing.
This work introduced to the public the extensive research behind the popular readability formulas of the likes of Rudolf Flesch and Robert Gunning.
[11][12][13] Klare also conducted or participated in research on the features of the reader that effected readability: 1. prior knowledge, 2. level of reading skill, 3. interest, and 4.
[14] In one 1976 analysis of 35 readability experiments, Klare showed how important it is to control for these variables when doing reader research.
[15] The century ended with a more complete view of those variables affecting reading success, much of it due to Klare's efforts.
In the text, those variables that affect readability are 1. content, 2. grade level (style), design, and organization.