Martin Wiesner|Richard Zowalla|Monika Pobiruchin
The Difficulty of German Information Booklets on Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis: Automated Readability and Vocabulary Analysis
Heilbronn University|German Medical Association|Heilbronn University|German Medical Association|Heilbronn University
background informationseeking psoriasis psoriatic arthritis patients confronted numerous educational materials looking internet literature suggests 170214 psoriasis psoriatic arthritis patients good level knowledge psoriasis treatment selfmanagement study 1994 found english psoriasispsoriatic arthritis brochures required reading level grades 812 understandable confirmed followup study 20 years later readability written healthrelated text material exceed sixthgrade level psoriasispsoriatic arthritis material seems illsuited target audience however data available readability levels psoriasispsoriatic arthritis brochures germanspeaking patients volume scope unclear objective study aimed analyze freely available educational materials psoriasispsoriatic arthritis patients written german quantifying difficulty assessing readability vocabulary used collected brochures methods data collection conducted manually via internet search engine psoriasispsoriatic arthritisspecific material published pdf documents next raw text extracted computerbased readability vocabulary analysis performed brochure readability analysis applied flesch reading ease fre metric adapted german language fourth vienna formula wstf assess laymenfriendliness vocabulary computation expert level conducted using specifically trained support vector machine classifier twosided twosample wilcoxon test applied test whether difficulty brochures pairwise topic groups different results total n68 brochures included readability assessment 71 4868 published pharmaceutical companies 22 1568 nonprofit organizations 7 568 public institutions collection separated four topic groups basic information psoriasispsoriatic arthritis g1g2 lifestyle behavior psoriasispsoriatic arthritis g3g4 medication therapy guidance g5 topics g6 average readability levels comparatively low fre3158 wstf1184 however twothirds educational materials 69 4768 achieved vocabulary score 4 ie easy easy therefore suitable lay audience statistically significant differences brochure groups g1 g3 fre p001 wstf p003 vocabulary measure l p01 exist statistically significant differences g2 g4 terms fre p03 wstf p03 l p03 conclusions online psoriasispsoriatic arthritis patient education materials german require average college university education level result patients face barriers understanding available material even though vocabulary used seems appropriate reason publishers psoriasispsoriatic arthritis brochures carefully revise educational materials provide easier comprehensible information patients lower health literacy levels