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Readability assessment of the American Rhinologic Society patient education materials
Author(s) -
Kasabwala Khushabu,
Misra Poonam,
Hansberry David R.,
Agarwal Nitin,
Baredes Soly,
Setzen Michael,
Anderson Eloy Jean
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international forum of allergy and rhinology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.503
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 2042-6984
pISSN - 2042-6976
DOI - 10.1002/alr.21097
Subject(s) - readability , medicine , grading (engineering) , patient education , grade level , reading (process) , medical education , microsoft office , health literacy , the internet , word processing , health care , multimedia , world wide web , family medicine , computer science , psychology , mathematics education , civil engineering , natural language processing , law , political science , engineering , economics , programming language , economic growth
Background The extensive amount of medical literature available on the Internet is frequently accessed by patients. To effectively contribute to healthcare decision‐making, these online resources should be worded at a level that is readable by any patient seeking information. The American Medical Association and National Institutes of Health recommend the readability of patient information material should be between a 4th to 6th grade level. In this study, we evaluate the readability of online patient education information available from the American Rhinologic Society (ARS) website using 9 different assessment tools that analyze the materials for reading ease and grade level of the target audience. Methods Online patient education material from the ARS was downloaded in February 2012 and assessed for level of readability using the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch‐Kincaid Grade Level, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Grading, Coleman‐Liau Index, Gunning‐Fog Index, FORCAST formula, Raygor Readability Estimate, the Fry Graph, and the New Dale‐Chall Readability Formula. Each article was pasted as plain text into a Microsoft® Word® document and each subsection was analyzed using the software package Readability Studio Professional Edition Version 2012.1. Results All healthcare education materials assessed were written between a 9th grade and graduate reading level and were considered “difficult” to read by the assessment scales. Conclusion Online patient education materials on the ARS website are written above the recommended 6th grade level and may require revision to make them easily understood by a broader audience.