Readability of Online Patient Education Materials for Graft-Versus-Host Disease

Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a complex systemic diagnosis which is associated with significant symptom distress in patients. Patient education has shown to mitigate uncertainty and distress, but to our knowledge, no studies have evaluated patient education materials on GVHD. We characterized...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cancer education 2023-08, Vol.38 (4), p.1363-1366
Main Authors: Kaundinya, Trisha, El-Behaedi, Salma, Choi, Jennifer N.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cancer Research
Comprehension
Graft versus host disease
Graft vs Host Disease - diagnosis
Graft vs Host Disease - prevention & control
Health Literacy
Humans
Internet
Patient education
Patient Education as Topic
Pharmacology/Toxicology
Readability
Smog
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Summary:Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a complex systemic diagnosis which is associated with significant symptom distress in patients. Patient education has shown to mitigate uncertainty and distress, but to our knowledge, no studies have evaluated patient education materials on GVHD. We characterized the readability and understandability of patient education materials on GVHD available online. We conducted a Google search of the top 100 non-sponsored search results, selecting for full-text patient education that is not peer-reviewed or a news article. We evaluated the text of the eligible search results against the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog, Automated Readability, Linsear Write Formula, Coleman-Liau Index, Smog Index, and Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) for understandability. Among 52 included Web results, 17 (32.7%) were provider-authored and 15 (28.8%) were hosted on university Web sites. The total average scores on validated readability tools were Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (46.4), Flesch Kincaid Grade Level (11.6), Gunning Fog (13.6), Automated Readability (12.3), Linsear Write Formula (12.6), Coleman-Liau Index (12.3), Smog Index (10.0), and PEMAT Understandability (65.5). Provider-authored links scored poorer than non-provider-authored links on all metrics, with significant differences for the Gunning Fog index ( p  
ISSN:0885-8195
1543-0154
DOI:10.1007/s13187-023-02271-2