Leia Martínez Silvagnoli|Caroline Shepherd|James Pritchett|Jason Gardner
Optimizing Readability and Format of Plain Language Summaries for Medical Research Articles: Cross-sectional Survey Study
Manchester Metropolitan University|Manchester Metropolitan University
plain language summaries plss intended provide readers clear nontechnical easily understandable overview medical scientific literature however audience preferences specific pls formats yet fully exploredthis study aims evaluate preferred readability level format plss medical research articles different disease states via webbased survey audiences different age groupsarticles describing phase iii clinical trials published toplevel peerreviewed journals may 2016 may 2018 identified 3 chronic disease states representing range adult patient age groups 1 psoriasis skin disease representative younger patients 2 multiple sclerosis ms neurological disease representative middleaged patients 3 rheumatoid arthritis ra painful joint disease representative older patients four plss developed research article 3 textonly summaries written high medium low complexity 1 infographic evaluate 4 pls formats 20question open survey specific one 3 diseases sent representative sample selected via ukbased patient association websites twitter facebook patient groups weightedaverage calculation applied respondents ranked preferences pls formatfor 3 articles weightedaverage preference scores showed infographic psoriasis 291 ms 271 ra 278 mediumcomplexity textbased pls reading age 1417 years us grade 911 psoriasis 290 ms 247 ra 277 two preferred pls formatsaudience preferences accounted preparing plss accompany peerreviewed original research articles oversimplified text viewed negatively graphical summaries mediumcomplexity textbased summaries appear popularpatients caregivers chance read medical research format understand however know much formats people different illnesses ages prefer researchers wanted find selected 3 medical articles illnesses affect different age groups psoriasis younger patients multiple sclerosis middleaged patients rheumatoid arthritis older patients created 4 summaries article one graphical summary 3 wordsonly summaries high medium low complexity researchers posted surveys uk patient group websites facebook patient groups ask people thought summaries surveys taken 167 people people patients psoriasis multiple sclerosis rheumatoid arthritis caregivers women half university degree illness people preferred graphical summary among wordonly summaries people preferred mediumcomplexity wording written reading age 14 17 years people felt graphical mediumcomplexity summaries clear concise others used jargon simple authors medical articles remember results writing summaries patients research needed preferences people illnesses see multimedia appendix 1 graphical summary plain language summary