The Difficulty of German Information Booklets on Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis: Automated Readability and Vocabulary Analysis

Background: Information-seeking Psoriasis or Psoriatic Arthritis patients are confronted with numerous educational materials when looking through the internet. Literature suggests that only 17.0%-21.4% of (Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis) patients have a good level of knowledge about psoriasis treatm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:JMIR dermatology 2020-03, Vol.3 (1), p.e16095
Main Authors: Wiesner, Martin, Zowalla, Richard, Pobiruchin, Monika
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arthritis
Automation
Brochures
Educational materials
German language
Health education
Health literacy
Heart failure
Internet
Lung cancer
Lung diseases
Medical personnel
Medical screening
Patients
Prostate cancer
Psoriasis
Psoriatic arthritis
Readability
Web sites
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Summary:Background: Information-seeking Psoriasis or Psoriatic Arthritis patients are confronted with numerous educational materials when looking through the internet. Literature suggests that only 17.0%-21.4% of (Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis) patients have a good level of knowledge about psoriasis treatment and self-management. A study from 1994 found that English Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis brochures required a reading level between grades 8-12 to be understandable, which was confirmed in a follow-up study 20 years later. As readability of written health-related text material should not exceed the sixth-grade level, Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis material seems to be ill-suited to its target audience. However, no data is available on the readability levels of Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis brochures for German-speaking patients, and both the volume and their scope are unclear. Objective: This study aimed to analyze freely available educational materials for Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis patients written in German, quantifying their difficulty by assessing both the readability and the vocabulary used in the collected brochures. Methods: Data collection was conducted manually via an internet search engine for Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis–specific material, published as PDF documents. Next, raw text was extracted, and a computer-based readability and vocabulary analysis was performed on each brochure. For the readability analysis, we applied the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) metric adapted for the German language, and the fourth Vienna formula (WSTF). To assess the laymen-friendliness of the vocabulary, the computation of an expert level was conducted using a specifically trained Support Vector Machine classifier. A two-sided, two-sample Wilcoxon test was applied to test whether the difficulty of brochures of pair-wise topic groups was different from each other. Results: In total, 68 brochures were included for readability assessment, of which 71% (48/68) were published by pharmaceutical companies, 22% (15/68) by nonprofit organizations, and 7% (5/68) by public institutions. The collection was separated into four topic groups: basic information on Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis (G1/G2), lifestyle, and behavior with Psoriasis/Psoriatic Arthritis (G3/G4), medication and therapy guidance (G5), and other topics (G6). On average, readability levels were comparatively low, with FRE=31.58 and WSTF=11.84. However, two-thirds of the educational materials (69%; 47/68) achieved
ISSN:2562-0959
2562-0959
DOI:10.2196/16095