Readability of Neurosurgery-Related Patient Education Materials Provided by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health

Schmitt, Paul J.; Prestigiacomo, Charles J.

doi:10.1016/j.wneu.2011.09.007

Cited by 53 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…These results prompted the recommendation that patient education materials should be written at a 5th‐grade level or at a level one to three grades below the mean reading level of the target population . Nevertheless, prior studies in surgical subfields have found the readability of patient education materials to be written way above these recommendations …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of the readability of patient education materials from surgical subspecialties

et al. 2013

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of the readability of patient education materials from surgical subspecialties

et al. 2013

Self Cite

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“…However, studies conducted that examine the readability of education materials related to neurosurgery find the reading level to be suitable for higher school grades than recommended for adequate patient comprehension. (1,3,19) Consequences of inadequate patient understanding vary widely, particularly in the context of neurological surgery. This article focuses on the economic impact of the failure to address low health literacy in neurosurgery.…”

Section: A N U S C R I P Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Educational Resources “Over the Head” of Neurosurgical Patients: The Economic Impact of Inadequate Health Literacy

et al. 2015

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“…Flesch-Kincaid was measured for comparability with other research. We used Microsoft Word’s grammar feature to calculate the readability score, comparable to other researchers [7, 51–53]. Each sentence was simplified using our lexical simplification approach.…”

Section: User Study Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

A user-study measuring the effects of lexical simplification and coherence enhancement on perceived and actual text difficulty

Leroy

Kauchak

Mouradi

2013

International Journal of Medical Informatics

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Purpose Low patient health literacy has been associated with cost increases in medicine because it contributes to inadequate care. Providing explanatory text is a convenient approach to distribute medical information and increase health literacy. Unfortunately, writing text that is easily understood is challenging. This work tests two text features for their impact on understanding: lexical simplification and coherence enhancement. Methods A user study was conducted to test the features’ effect on perceived and actual text difficulty. Individual sentences were used to test perceived difficulty. Using a 5-point Likert scale, participants compared eight pairs of original and simplified sentences. Abstracts were used to test actual difficulty. For each abstract, four versions were created: original, lexically simplified, coherence enhanced, and lexically simplified and coherence enhanced. Using a mixed design, one group of participants worked with the original and lexically simplified documents (no coherence enhancement) while a second group worked with the coherence enhanced versions. Actual difficulty was measured using a Cloze measure and multiple-choice questions. Results Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, 200 people participated of which 187 qualified based on our data qualification tests. A paired-samples t-test for the sentence ratings showed a significant reduction in difficulty after lexical simplification (p < .001). Results for actual difficulty are based on the abstracts and associated tasks. A two-way ANOVA for the Cloze test showed no effect of coherence enhancement but a main effect for lexical simplification, with the simplification leading to worse scores (p = .004). A follow-up ANOVA showed this effect exists only for function words when coherence was not enhanced (p = .008). In contrast, a two-way ANOVA for answering multiple-choice questions showed a significant beneficial effect of coherence enhancement (p = .003) but no effect of lexical simplification. Conclusions Lexical simplification reduced the perceived difficulty of texts. Coherence enhancement reduced the actual difficulty of text when measured using multiple-choice questions. However, the Cloze measure results showed that lexical simplification can negatively impact the flow of the text.

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Readability of Neurosurgery-Related Patient Education Materials Provided by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health

Cited by 53 publications

References 8 publications

Analysis of the readability of patient education materials from surgical subspecialties

Analysis of the readability of patient education materials from surgical subspecialties

Educational Resources “Over the Head” of Neurosurgical Patients: The Economic Impact of Inadequate Health Literacy

A user-study measuring the effects of lexical simplification and coherence enhancement on perceived and actual text difficulty

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