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The central aim in our NWO 'Comprehensible Language' project (2012-2016) was to investigate to what extent Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) intentionally and unintentionally affect political knowledge and political attitudes. In this article, we present an overview of four years of research. First, we investigated reasons for use of VAAs, distinguishing three types of users: checkers (well-informed, enjoying to check the VAA), seekers (looking for political information to base their vote on) and doubters (looking for information but cynical about politics). The proportions of these groups differ for first vs. second order elections. Second, we investigated whether VAAs increase users' political knowledge. We found that users report an increase of internal efficacy due to their VAA use, but we did not find an increase in actual political knowledge. Third, a field experiment showed systematic effects of framing variation on the answers to VAA assertions, which might suggest different underlying knowledge representations. Finally, think aloud research showed that users experience considerable problems with understanding the assertions semantically and pragmatically, as well as with interpreting the results screen. Additionally, we found that users view the result screen as an end point rather than as a starting point for deliberation. We discuss some implications for theory and practice.

In medieval legal transactions the use of the written word was only one of many ways of conducting business. Important roles were played by the spoken word and by the 'action' of ritual. The relationship between 'rituals' and literacy has been the focus of much recent research. Medieval societies which made extensive use of written instruments in legal transactions have been shown to employ rituals as well. This has ledto investigation of the respective functions of written instruments and legal rituals. What is the nature of legal rituals? If they included oral verbalization, how did the spoken words relate to those of the written instruments that played a role in the same legal transactions? Usually, we only have the written documents to answer these questions, and they are often silent about the rituals and oral elements of the transactions they document

In this contribution Mineke Bosch connects to Rosemarie Buikema's work with the Museum of Equality and Difference which aims at inspiring museum and exhibition curators to tell more complex stories that include postcolonial and gender perspectives. Bosch focuses on the importance of objects for the history of women and gender, and the value of historical knowledge about women and gender for museums and heritage institutions. She does so by discussing many aspects of the making of the exhibition Strijd! 100 jaar vrouwenkiesrecht (Struggle! 100 Years of Women's Suffrage) in the Groninger Museum in 2019. The exhibition through its objects not only changed the story of women's suffrage, it also enlarged 'suffrage literacy'. This in turn led to the recognition and acceptance of objects from this historical episode by museums.

Trying to gain access to an isolated rural Aboriginal community in Western Australia
This article describes my enterprise to collect data about health literacy among an isolated rural Aboriginal community in Western Australia. The aim of the research was to find out whether an adapted survey about health literacy for less developed and lower income countries could be used to collect data on this issue among a rural isolated Aboriginal community. I was confronted with three challenges into gaining access to this community. In the first place, I had never been to Australia, secondly I am not from Aboriginal descent and thirdly, the community was isolated geographically. In this article, I describe my ways of gaining access to persons from this isolated community, which included working in the canteen of the community school and preparing weekly a healthy snack for the school children, working in the local allotments which offer subsidized jobs to persons without work, and visiting local organizations. In this way, I was finally able to speak with about 18 persons, half of them being from Aboriginal descent, about issues related to health literacy.