Readability of Patient Educational Materials in English Versus Arabic

Little research has been done about patient educational materials (PEMs) written in Arabic. Readability of Arabic PEMs has not previously been assessed because, until recently, there was no validated Arabic readability assessment tool. A total of 207 PEMs in both Arabic and English were collected fr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health literacy research and practice 2019-07, Vol.3 (3), p.e170-e173
Main Authors: Malik, Abdulaziz, El-Haj, Mahmoud, Paasche-Orlow, Michael K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arabic language
Automation
Bill of Rights-US
Brief Report
Consent
Dialects
Educational materials
Elementary school students
English language
Health care
Health education
Health literacy
Literacy
Medical education
Medical language
Orthographic symbols
patient education materials
Preventive medicine
Privacy
Questionnaires
Readability
Translations
Websites
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Little research has been done about patient educational materials (PEMs) written in Arabic. Readability of Arabic PEMs has not previously been assessed because, until recently, there was no validated Arabic readability assessment tool. A total of 207 PEMs in both Arabic and English were collected from the Medline Plus portal. Readability was assessed using Flesch-Kincaid in English and the Open Source Metric for Measuring Arabic Narratives, a new Arabic readability test. We also examined Arabic documents for other linguistic features that could lead to confusion. Mean readability grades were 6.1 and 7.1 for Arabic and English, respectively (p < .01). In 31.6% of PEMs, the English text was higher by two or more grades than the Arabic text, and the Arabic text was higher by two or more grades than the English text in 3.8% of PEMs. No diacritical marks in Arabic were used. An array of esoteric Arabic medical terms, transliterated English terms, Arabicized English terms, and written versions of spoken Arabic dialects were used. .
ISSN:2474-8307
2475-6024
2474-8307
DOI:10.3928/24748307-20190528-01