ArticleAmerican journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality
Variation in the readability of items within surveys.
Article in American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
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- Participant motivators and perceptions of risks and benefits in adult Phase 2/3 COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2025Article
- Designing and Validating a Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia-Specific Quality of Life Rating Scale (HSPQoL).Cerebellum (London, England) · 2024Article
- Readability Metrics in Patient Education: Where Do We Innovate?Clinics and practice · 2024Article
- Words Can Hurt: A Taxonomy of Verbally Pressured Sexual Exploitation in the SES-V.Journal of sex research · 2024Article
- Measures of Patient and Surrogate Preparedness for End-of-Life Decision-Making.Journal of pain and symptom management · 2024Article
- Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey: Parent Feedback and Psychometric Properties.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2024Article
- Screening and Assessment for Psychological Distress among Burn Survivors.European burn journal · 2022Review
- Developing patient-centered outcomes research infrastructure in a rural community through patient and stakeholder engagement and education during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2022Article
- School food offer at lunchtime: assessing the validity and reliability of a web-based questionnaire.Public health nutrition · 2021Article
- The development and psychometric evaluation of the Survey of Obstructive Sleep Apnea Functional Health Literacy.Sleep medicine research · 2021Article
- A Scoping Review of Nature, Land, and Environmental Connectedness and Relatedness.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- A Review of Key Likert Scale Development Advances: 1995-2019.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- A crossed-disciplinary evaluation of parental perceptions surrounding pediatric non-invasive brain stimulation research.International journal of pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing · 2020Article
- Translation and Validation of the Hospital for Special Surgery Pediatric Functional Activity Brief Scale for French Paediatric Populations.Physiotherapy Canada. Physiotherapie Canada · 2020Article
- Article
- Readability Assessment of Commonly Used German Urological Questionnaires.Current urology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The objective of this study was to estimate the variation in the readability of survey items within 2 widely used health-related quality-of-life surveys: the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire-25 (VFQ-25) and the Short Form Health Survey, version 2 (SF-36v2). Flesch-Kincaid and Flesch Reading Ease formulas were used to estimate readability. Individual survey item scores and descriptive statistics for each survey were calculated. Variation of individual item scores from the mean survey score was graphically depicted for each survey. The mean reading grade level and reading ease estimates for the VFQ-25 and SF-36v2 were 7.8 (fairly easy) and 6.4 (easy), respectively. Both surveys had notable variation in item readability; individual item readability scores ranged from 3.7 to 12.0 (very easy to difficult) for the VFQ-25 and 2.2 to 12.0 (very easy to difficult) for the SF-36v2. Because survey respondents may not comprehend items with readability scores that exceed their reading ability, estimating the readability of each survey item is an important component of evaluating survey readability. Standards for measuring the readability of surveys are needed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.