ArticleAmerican journal of infection control2021
Readability, content, and quality of COVID-19 patient education materials from academic medical centers in the United States.
Article in American journal of infection control, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Quality of web-based information about the coronavirus disease 2019: a rapid systematic review of infodemiology studies published during the first year of the pandemic.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Access to information in deaf and hard-of-hearing people.PloS one · 2026Article
- Assessing the Understandability and Actionability of Education Materials for Agricultural Workers' Health.Journal of agromedicine · 2025Article
- Evaluating a retrieval-augmented pregnancy chatbot: a comprehensibility-accuracy-readability study of the DIAN AI assistant.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2025Article
- MedReadMe: A Systematic Study for Fine-grained Sentence Readability in Medical Domain.Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing · 2024Article
- Readability of Online Patient Education Materials for Congenital Hand Differences.Hand (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Evaluating understandability and actionability of online education materials for home-care patients with COVID-19 in Japan.BMC research notes · 2023Article
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- COVID-19 information uptake amongst a rheumatology interested population.Clinical rheumatology · 2023Article
- Readability of online monkeypox patient education materials: Improved recognition of health literacy is needed for dissemination of infectious disease information.Infection, disease & health · 2023Article
- Health literacy characteristics of over-the-counter rapid antigen COVID-19 test materials.Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP · 2022Article
- Promoting Health Education through Mobile Apps: A Quantitative Analysis of American Hospitals.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Separating Features From Functionality in Vaccination Apps: Computational Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Readability, understandability and language accessibility of Swedish websites about the coronavirus disease 2019: a cross-sectional study.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2022Article
- Readability of Korean-Language COVID-19 Information from the South Korean National COVID-19 Portal Intended for the General Public: Cross-sectional Infodemiology Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Searching for Social Media Addiction: A Content Analysis of Top Websites Found through Online Search Engines.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundSARS-CoV-2 has spread rapidly resulted in a global pandemic and public health crisis. The internet is a frequently used resource for providing patient education materials (PEMs). The aim of this study was to evaluate the readability, content, and quality of web-based PEMs on COVID-19 from US academic medical centers.
methodsThe names of US medical schools were obtained from the Association of American Medical Colleges website (n = 145). Institutional, hospital, and heath encyclopedia websites associated with each schools' medical center were identified using Google. Readability of COVID-19 PEMs was calculated using three validated indices: (1) Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level, (2) Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, and (3) Gunning Frequency of Gobbledygook. Content was evaluated using a scoring matrix based on materials available on the Center for Disease Control website. The Patient Education Material Assessment Tool for Print (PEMAT-P) was used to assess usability and actionability.
resultsA total of 141 (97%) PEMs met inclusion criteria and were analyzed for readability, content, and quality. The mean readability was above the recommended sixth grade reading level (P < .001). Content was variable across PEMs. The PEMAT-P scores reflected good understandability with a median score of 83% (IQR 75%-87%), while actionability was poor with a median score of 41% (IQR 40%-60%).
conclusionsDespite availability of web-based PEMs for COVID-19, the readability was significantly higher than the National Institute of Health and US Department of Health and Human Services recommended sixth grade reading level and actionability of PEMs was low. It is critical to provide readable PEMs on COVID-19 to effectively disseminate accurate information and facilitate patients' understanding of the virus, how it spreads, and how to protect themselves.
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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.