Language in a Time of COVID-19: Literacy Bias Ethnic Minorities Face During COVID-19 from Online Information in the UK

Abstract

Objectives To investigate the readability and presence of translated online information readily available to the British public during COVID-19. Design A cross-sectional study was performed. The terms "Coronavirus", "COVID-19", "Lockdown", "Social Distancing", "Handwashing", "Furlough Scheme" and "Sick pay" were inputted into the popular search engine, Google. Websites were categorised by their source (i.e. Government, Non-Governmental Organisation, NHS and Commercial) and theme (i.e. general COVID-19 information, population practise and employment rulings). Reliable calculators for assessing readability (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, Gunning Fog Index, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Coleman-Liau Index and Automated Readability Index) were used. Main Outcome Measures The median scores with the interquartile range from each calculator of the pooled data were observed. The presence of accompanying translated material and graphic information was also counted and presented as counts and percentages. The number of readable websites (i.e. a score ≤ 8) for each source and theme category were also recorded. Setting UK Internet servers. Results The median scores of the pooled data (n = 148) had shown that the majority of websites were unreadable to the average British reader according to each calculator used (SMOG 1.3%; GF 6.8%; FK 35.8%; CL 2.6%; ARI 40%). Only 3.4% and 6.8% of the pooled websites had readily available translated material and accompanying graphic material, respectively. Conclusion Readability of COVID-19 information is below national standards and that there is a lack of accompanying translated and graphics-based material online. This may lead to an amplified level of misunderstanding in BAME populations about the COVID-19 pandemic and the rulings put in place.

From Business Information Literacy to Decision-Making, Problem Solving and Innovation

“…Some approaches consider information literacy to be the ability to construct critical knowledge (Brady, 2021;Eisenberg et al, 2006;Keiser, 2016) and to develop digital skills in schools (Humrickhouse, 2021;Ma, Qin, 2021;Rubach, Larzarides, 2021). Information literacy is also useful for health students to seek health information (Hurt, McLoughlin, 2021;Khan et al, 2020;Stokes et al, 2021). Other approaches consider that individuals develop that literacy by their experience (Bruce, 1999).…”

E-government in the Era of Globalization and the Health Crisis caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic, between Standards and Innovation

“…Other research has focused on investigating the readability and presence of translated online information available to a specific audience during COVID-19. Their findings were that the readability of COVID-19 information would be below national standards and that there would be a lack of translated and graphic accompanying materials online which could lead to an increased level of misunderstanding about the COVID-19 pandemic and the decisions taken [21]. Some researchers wanted to present data sets that provide information about this pandemic, in response to the global demand for data to understand COVID-19 from a specific country (e.g.…”

Linguistic fairness in the U.S.: The case of multilingual public health information about COVID-19

“…The emerg-182 ing picture is that official COVID-19 information is available 183 for languages with many users who have limited English pro-184 ficiency but scarce for smaller linguistic communities. While this trend is modulated by the state and the specific language under consideration, the sheer numbers are disheartening (21).…”

“…The quality of many health resources 32 for non-English users, however, is far from ideal (15,16), 33 contributing to health disparities nationwide and amplifying 34 structural inequalities accentuated by the pandemic (17)(18)(19). (20)(21)(22)(23)(24). Compounding these issues is a lack of 45 uniform standards for the provision of multilingual resources, 46 as well as the Trump administration's rollback of a federal rule 47 requiring that patients be informed of their right to language 48 interpretation services (25).…”

“…To approximate the text difficulty of Spanish-language COVID-19 information as part of a rapid response to the pandemic, we applied four automated readability formulas to our corpora of public health documents (Materials and Methods). Readability formulas attempt to predict the difficulty of a text, usually expressed as a grade level, and have been used to pinpoint important limitations in Anglophone public health information about COVID-19 (20,21,23). These formulas are based on the assumption that, other things being equal, longer linguistic units, such as words and sentences, hinder comprehension.…”