Readability Assessment of Online Patient Education Material on Barrett's Esophagus Across the United States

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

5-21-2025

Publication Title

Surg Endosc

Keywords

Barrett esophagus, conference abstract, e-learning, educational material, health disparity, health literacy, human, medical society, patient education, reading, United States

Abstract

Health inequality due to low health literacy has been well reported in the literature. Because of this, many organizations have created guidelines and recommendations to help overcome this widespread issue. The recommended reading level for patient education material provided by the American Medical Association (AMA) is no greater than the 6th grade level. Multiple studies have been done showing the average reading level for patient education material to be greater than this recommendation. In this study, 54 medical centers were identified to have online education materials available for patients related to Barrett's esophagus. The description of Barrett's Esophagus on these websites was analyzed using multiple readability calculators including the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, the Gunning Fog Score, the Coleman Liau Index, and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook index. These results were compared to a grade level value of 6.9 based on the recommendation by the AMA. Using a one sample t-test with a p-value of 0.001, all four calculators were considered statistically significant. Of the 54 websites, only 2 websites had a reading level less than or equal to 6.9. However, this was not consistent across all 4 calculators. This study highlights the significant disparity in online patient education materials and the need for improvements with current patient education.

Volume

31

First Page

S432

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