title: Readability assessment of the American Rhinologic Society patient education materials.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The extensive amount of medical literature available on the Internet is frequently accessed by patients. To effectively contribute to healthcare decision-making, these online resources should be worded at a level that is readable by any patient seeking information. The American Medical Association and National Institutes of Health recommend the readability of patient information material should be between a 4th to 6th grade level. In this study, we evaluate the readability of online patient education information available from the American Rhinologic Society (ARS) website using 9 different assessment tools that analyze the materials for reading ease and grade level of the target audience.
  
  
  METHODS
  Online patient education material from the ARS was downloaded in February 2012 and assessed for level of readability using the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Grading, Coleman-Liau Index, Gunning-Fog Index, FORCAST formula, Raygor Readability Estimate, the Fry Graph, and the New Dale-Chall Readability Formula. Each article was pasted as plain text into a Microsoft® Word® document and each subsection was analyzed using the software package Readability Studio Professional Edition Version 2012.1.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All healthcare education materials assessed were written between a 9th grade and graduate reading level and were considered "difficult" to read by the assessment scales.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Online patient education materials on the ARS website are written above the recommended 6th grade level and may require revision to make them easily understood by a broader audience.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ 07103, USA.
authors.forename: Khushabu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kasabwala
authors.forename: Poonam
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Misra
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Hansberry
authors.forename: Nitin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Agarwal
authors.forename: Soly
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Baredes
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Setzen
authors.forename: Jean Anderson
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Eloy
mesh_terms: D000574:American Medical Association; D032882:Comprehension; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D009316:National Institutes of Health (U.S.); D009862:Online Systems; D010036:Otolaryngology; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012955:Societies, Medical; D014481:United States