A Readability Analysis of Online Mental Health Resources

Analyzing the reading grade level of online mental health information is an important first step in ensuring that information is largely accessible by the general public, so as not to perpetuate existing health disparities across socioeconomic groups. The present study systematically examined grade-...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American psychologist 2019-05, Vol.74 (4), p.474-483
Main Authors: Skierkowski, Dorothy D., Florin, Paul, Harlow, Lisa L., Machan, Jason, Ye, Yinjiao
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comprehension
Grade Level
Health care industry
Health Disparities
Health information
Health Literacy
Health Resources
Human
Humans
Internet
Medical Model
Mental Disorders
Mental Health
Organizations
Readability
Reading
United States
Websites
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Analyzing the reading grade level of online mental health information is an important first step in ensuring that information is largely accessible by the general public, so as not to perpetuate existing health disparities across socioeconomic groups. The present study systematically examined grade-level readability of mental health information related to various psychiatric diagnoses, obtained from 6 highly utilized mental health websites, using a generalized estimating equations approach. Results suggest that, in general, the readability of mental health information is largely well above the 6th-to-8th grade level recommended by several national health organizations, including the CDC and NIH (Kutner, Greenberg, Jin, & Paulsen, 2006; National Institutes of Health, 2001, 2017), with reading-grade-level estimates from the model ranging from 5.62 to 17.9. Further efforts are required to ensure that writers of online health information do not exacerbate existing health disparities by ignoring these guidelines.
ISSN:0003-066X
1935-990X
DOI:10.1037/amp0000324