Health Information Text Characteristics

Authors

Gondy Leroy, Claremont Graduate UniversityFollow
Evren Eryilmaz '11, Claremont Graduate University
Benjamin T. Laroya, City of Hope National Medical Center

Student Co-author

CGU Graduate

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Department

Information Systems and Technology (CGU)

Publication Date

2006

Disciplines

Databases and Information Systems | Management Information Systems | Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

Millions of people search online for medical text, but these texts are often too complicated to understand. Readability evaluations are mostly based on surface metrics such as character or words counts and sentence syntax, but content is ignored. We compared four types of documents, easy and difficult WebMD documents, patient blogs, and patient educational material, for surface and content-based metrics. The documents differed significantly in reading grade levels and vocabulary used. WebMD pages with high readability also used terminology that was more consumer-friendly. Moreover, difficult documents are harder to understand due to their grammar and word choice and because they discuss more difficult topics. This indicates that we can simplify many documents by focusing on word choice in addition to sentence structure, however, for difficult documents this may be insufficient.

Comments

Nominated for Distinguished Paper Award

Rights Information

© 2008 AMIA

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Recommended Citation

G. Leroy, E. Eryilmaz, and B. T. Laroya, "Health Information Text Characteristics", American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium, Washington DC, November 11-15, 2006.