The Effect of Graphic Organizers on Subjective and Objective Comprehension of a Health Education Text

Abstract

This study examined the effect of graphic organizers on the comprehension of a health education brochure text and compared subjective with objective comprehension measures. Graphic organizers are graphical depictions of relations among concepts in a text. Participants read a brochure text about asthma with and without these organizers, and subjective and objective text comprehension was measured. It was found that graphic organizers had effects on four levels of objective comprehension as indicated by open comprehension questions. However, on the subjective comprehension measure using Likert-type scales, the groups with and without graphic organizers did not differ from each other. It is concluded that health education texts could benefit from relatively simple techniques to increase comprehension. Furthermore, in developing health education materials, comprehension should be measured objectively.

Effect of a school-based nutrition education program on adolescents’ nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in rural areas of China

“…Particular attention to the most current graphic trends and communication styles is critical in achieving and holding the interest of young people. So promotional materials need to be constantly updated, including more photographs, and employ bright colors and more unique shapes [37]. Most of all, the materials need to speak the target population's language and relate to their circumstances and social context [38].…”

Conceptual change with refutational maps

“…Second, at the textbase level of comprehension, emphasis is on the semantic and rhetorical structure of texts, such as the network of related propositions (Hofman & Oostendorp, 1999). Kools, van de Wiel, Ruiter, Crüts, and Kok (2006) indicated that on the level of textbase understanding, readers may remember parts of a text but not necessarily understand them all. Therefore, learning at the level of the textbase mainly contributes to reproduction of a text and, by itself, allows only a superficial level of comprehension (Kintsch, 1993).…”

“…With regard to Kintsch's three levels of comprehension, Kools et al (2006) contended that the process of constructing mental representations is influenced by the coherence of a text. Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) claimed that a text has two levels of structure: microstructure and macrostructure.…”

“…Finally, construction refers to synthesizing micropropositions into a single proposition denoting a global fact or category. Allowing for the internal text structures, therefore, the coherence of a text requires not only that the relations among sentences are explicitly presented for micro level, but also that the sections of a text are clearly and logically related to each other and to the overall topic for macro level (Hofman & Oostendorp, 1999;Kools et al, 2006).…”

The Effect of Summarization Instructional Strategies and Presentation Formats on the Outcomes of Historical Argumentative Reasoning

“…DiCecco & Gleason (2002) investigated the effect of graphic organizer to relational knowledge. Kools et al, (2006) examined the effect of graphic organizer to objective and subjective comprehension, recall and transfer. According to Kang (2004) graphic organizer can help students to get, to explain and to communicate information, and they can visualize concepts.…”