Comparison of Readability of Official Public Health Information About COVID-19 on Websites of International Agencies and the Governments of 15 Countries

Mishra, Vishala; Dexter, Joseph P.

doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18033

Cited by 67 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…3 The negative association between understanding of the passage and self-reported vaccine hesitancy, and the unwillingness of most participants to share the information on social media, suggest a need for more targeted and accessible messaging to promote confidence in the J&J-Janssen vaccine among unvaccinated adults. 5,6 The study is limited by the convenience sampling strategy, which was used to investigate response to the J&J-Janssen vaccine pause soon after it was announced. The participants recruited were not representative of the US population as a whole, and the findings of this study should not be generalized to other contexts.…”

Section: Results |mentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of Unvaccinated US Adults to Official Information About the Pause in Use of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine

Mishra

Dexter

2021

Preprint

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On April 13, 2021 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended in a pause in use of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J)-Janssen COVID-19 vaccine due to reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) in recently vaccinated individuals. The announcement of the pause required development of a coordinated communication strategy under extreme time pressure and careful messaging by stakeholders to mitigate reduced public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines, as was observed following the temporary suspension of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in many countries. In this survey study, we evaluated understanding and impressions of the CDC's public online information about the J&J-Janssen pause among unvaccinated US adults.

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Section: Results |mentioning

confidence: 99%

Response of Unvaccinated US Adults to Official Information About the Pause in Use of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine

Mishra

Dexter

2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…29 On the other hand, the limited Arabic oral health information on governmental sources and official dental organization could have led to such surge in tweeting trend. 28 Information frequently retweeted on Twitter was analyzed to evaluate public reactions. An earlier study report that virtual platforms and social media are preferred by patients to seek information and share their experiences with peers to get advice, support and reassurance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The peak gain emphasizes uncertainty in two issues health literacy and health/risk communication. 25 , 28 The effect of limited health literacy became magnified during the pandemic. 25 Limited oral health literacy regarding oral care has been linked to lack or less than optimal routine dental visits.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 29 On the other hand, the limited Arabic oral health information on governmental sources and official dental organization could have led to such surge in tweeting trend. 28 …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 25 Furthermore, the limited or lack of patient/lay people Arabic information on the professional oral health organization Twitter accounts and websites might have contributed to such information soliciting behavior. 28 The second and fifth most tweeted information was death of a dentist due to COVID-19 with 523 retweets and 4,019 likes of this news and infection of dental school dean with coronavirus with 114 tweets and 352 likes. News as such gets increased attention on social media due to various sentiments or frustration experienced by the users.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Dental Care in the Arab Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Infodemiological Study

Al‐Khalifa¹,

AlSheikh²,

Alsahafi³

et al. 2021

RMHP

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Background: Twitter is a powerful platform which could be used to reflect on the demand and supply of dental services during a pandemic. The aim of this study was to examine the nature and dissemination of COVID-19 information related to dentistry on Twitter platform Arabic database during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: One hundred and fifty independent searches with a combination of keywords for both COVID-19 and dentistry from a preselected Arabic keyword were carried out for the period from the 2nd of March (first confirmed cases of COVID-19) to the 6th of July 2020. Tweets were filtered to remove duplicate and unrelated tweets. The suitable tweets were 1,150. After calibration, two examiners coded the tweets following two main themes: COVID-19 and oral health-related information. Tweets were then compared with COVID-19 daily events in the Arab countries as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using Microsoft Excel.Results: The most retweeted information was the help with urgent consultation or emergency dental treatment during COVID-19 tweeted by a dentist. There were 673 retweets and 1,116 likes of this tweet. The most common tweets related to oral health were needs of dental treatment (n=462, 39.5%) of which, toothaches or wisdom tooth problems constituted 48% of the related tweets. Conclusion:Based on the results of this study, it is obvious that social media users reacted to the COVID-19 threat to dental practices. Twitter as one of the social media platforms served as a connection between dental health professionals and patients.

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Improving access to COVID‐19 information by ensuring the readability of government websites

Serry

Stebbins

Martchenko

et al. 2022

Health Prom J of Aust

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Issue addressed This study evaluated the readability of web pages from two public‐facing Victorian government websites that were responsible for communicating key health messages relating to the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020. Methods Webpages were downloaded and filtered to identify relevant materials (English language materials containing HTML files that referred to COVID‐19). The files were converted to text files and two Python packages, SpaCy and TextStat were used to obtain the data presented here. In addition to running two well‐established readability tests, SMOG Index (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) and Flesch Reading Ease formula, we also calculated the figures for sentence length and word length, which drive the readability measures and allow a disaggregated view of the data. Type token ratio measures were conducted as a reflection of the breadth of vocabulary used in the web pages. Results Derived measures of text complexity were higher than recommended levels of text complexity for health promotion materials, which are generally set at senior primary school levels. This did not vary depending on the intended audience (public or professional). A senior secondary reading level was required for effective engagement with the text published on both sites. Conclusions Improving the readability of materials on key government websites where information about COVID‐19 is being communicated to the public, represents a low cost and potentially effective means of improving public understanding of the pandemic and the steps individuals need to take to protect themselves and the community. So what? Given the challenges widely identified in ensuring compliance with protective behaviours, confidence in seeking vaccination and increasing distrust of government, it would be strategic to improve public communication to ensure health messages are simple and readily understood. Summary The complexity and readability of text contained in web pages during 2020 from two Victorian government departments were evaluated. Communication regarding the restrictions and the management of risks associated with COVID‐19 was the main focus of these 367 individual web pages from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Department of Education and Training (DET). Results indicated that across both sites and on both readability measures used, an education level equivalent to senior secondary school would be required to readily understand the contents.

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Comparison of Readability of Official Public Health Information About COVID-19 on Websites of International Agencies and the Governments of 15 Countries

Abstract: Open Access. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License.

Cited by 67 publications

References 5 publications

Response of Unvaccinated US Adults to Official Information About the Pause in Use of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine

Response of Unvaccinated US Adults to Official Information About the Pause in Use of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine

Dental Care in the Arab Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Infodemiological Study

Improving access to COVID‐19 information by ensuring the readability of government websites

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