ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2023
Assessing the Readability of Online Patient Education Materials in Obstetrics and Gynecology Using Traditional Measures: Comparative Analysis and Limitations.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A quantitative analysis of the readability of breast health patient information resources in Ireland.Irish journal of medical science · 2026Article
- Evaluating Readability and Understandability of Patient-Reported Questionnaires for Bladder Pain Syndrome.International urogynecology journal · 2026Article
- Public health implications of allergic rhinitis information on YouTube and Bilibili: a cross-cultural analysis of content quality, engagement, and seasonal trends.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Navigating Home Care Packages: A Content and Usability Analysis of Consumer-Facing Information on Aged Care Provider Websites.Australasian journal on ageing · 2026Article
- Privacy policies for FDA-authorized or FDA-recognized digital therapeutics impose high digital health literacy demands: a cross-sectional analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Quality of Online Information on Patient-Specific Knee Arthroplasty and Its Impact on Personalized Care.Clinics and practice · 2025Article
- Multidimensional assessment of large language model responses to patient questions on gestational diabetes mellitus.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of generative artificial intelligence in deciding fusion treatment of lumbar degeneration: a comparative analysis and narrative review.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2025Review
- Readability of Online Patient-Directed Content About Cystoscopy and Urodynamic Testing.International urogynecology journal · 2025Article
- Developing and sustaining inclusive language in biomedical informatics communications: an AMIA Board of Directors endorsed paper on the Inclusive Language and Context Style Guidelines.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2025Article
- Evaluating a retrieval-augmented pregnancy chatbot: a comprehensibility-accuracy-readability study of the DIAN AI assistant.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2025Article
- Readability assessment of Spanish online patient education materials in gynecologic oncology.Gynecologic oncology reports · 2024Article
- Carpal Tunnel Surgery: Can Patients Read, Understand, and Act on Online Educational Resources?The Iowa orthopaedic journal · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPatient education materials (PEMs) can be vital sources of information for the general population. However, despite American Medical Association (AMA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommendations to make PEMs easier to read for patients with low health literacy, they often do not adhere to these recommendations. The readability of online PEMs in the obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) field, in particular, has not been thoroughly investigated.
objectiveThe study sampled online OB/GYN PEMs and aimed to examine (1) agreeability across traditional readability measures (TRMs), (2) adherence of online PEMs to AMA and NIH recommendations, and (3) whether the readability level of online PEMs varied by web-based source and medical topic. This study is not a scoping review, rather, it focused on scoring the readability of OB/GYN PEMs using the traditional measures to add empirical evidence to the literature.
methodsA total of 1576 online OB/GYN PEMs were collected via 3 major search engines. In total 93 were excluded due to shorter content (less than 100 words), yielding 1483 PEMs for analysis. Each PEM was scored by 4 TRMs, including Flesch-Kincaid grade level, Gunning fog index, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, and the Dale-Chall. The PEMs were categorized based on publication source and medical topic by 2 research team members. The readability scores of the categories were compared statistically.
resultsResults indicated that the 4 TRMs did not agree with each other, leading to the use of an averaged readability (composite) score for comparison. The composite scores across all online PEMs were not normally distributed and had a median at the 11th grade. Governmental PEMs were the easiest to read amongst source categorizations and PEMs about menstruation were the most difficult to read. However, the differences in the readability scores among the sources and the topics were small.
conclusionsThis study found that online OB/GYN PEMs did not meet the AMA and NIH readability recommendations and would be difficult to read and comprehend for patients with low health literacy. Both findings connected well to the literature. This study highlights the need to improve the readability of OB/GYN PEMs to help patients make informed decisions. Research has been done to create more sophisticated readability measures for medical and health documents. Once validated, these tools need to be used by web-based content creators of health education materials.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.