Open AccessReadability and lexical sophistication of colon cancer websites – a corpus-assisted assessment of online educational materials for patients
Author(s) -
Anna Bączkowska
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
forum filologiczne ateneum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2353-2912
DOI - 10.36575/2353-2912/1(7)2019.009
Subject(s) - readability , sophistication , computer science , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , sociology , social science , programming language
The aim of this paper is to check whether the information for colon cancer patients available on top websites devoted to this disease is comprehensible for the readers or whether, due to high saturation with special medical terms, it is beyond the recommended readability level ofan average internet user. Two main criteria of analysis were involved in the study: readability and lexical sophistication. The methods used in the study include 8 readability tests (ARI, Colemen-Liau, New Dale-Chall, Flesch-Kincid, Fry, Gunning Fog, Raygor Estimate, and SMOG), TAALES software and Lexical Complexity Analyser used to examine syntactic and lexical parameters of texts, and a corpus-assisted web-based tool used for lexical sophistication called VocabProfile. The study has shown that none of the 30 websites under scrutiny meets the demand of the recommended readability level, and that higher lexical sophistication involves a lower readability level.