title: Readability assessment of online urology patient education materials.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The National Institutes of Health, American Medical Association, and United States Department of Health and Human Services recommend that patient education materials be written at a fourth to sixth grade reading level to facilitate comprehension. We examined and compared the readability and difficulty of online patient education materials from the American Urological Association and academic urology departments in the Northeastern United States.
  
  
  METHODS
  We assessed the online patient education materials for difficulty level with 10 commonly used readability assessment tools, including the Flesch Reading Ease Score, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, Gunning Frequency of Gobbledygook, New Dale-Chall Test, Coleman-Liau index, New Fog Count, Raygor Readability Estimate, FORCAST test and Fry score.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most patient education materials on the websites of these programs were written at or above the eleventh grade reading level.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Urological online patient education materials are written above the recommended reading level. They may need to be simplified to facilitate better patient understanding of urological topics.
authors.affiliation: Division of Urology, Department of Surgery, Neurological Institute of New Jersey, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey 07103, USA.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Colaco
authors.forename: Peter F
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Svider
authors.forename: Nitin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Agarwal
authors.forename: Jean Anderson
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Eloy
authors.forename: Imani M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Jackson
mesh_terms: D032882:Comprehension; D004522:Educational Status; D057220:Health Literacy / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D013664:Teaching Materials; D014481:United States; D014572:Urology / Q000193:education*