Reading Difficulty Level of Medical Resources on Television Web Sites: Recommendations for a Social.Practices Approach to Consumer Health Literacy

摘要

Mass media plays a critical role in communicating health messages to the public. Local television stations are posting more health content on the Web; however, the difficulty level of this information has not been evaluated. Study objectives were to assess the content of health stories on local television Web sites, and to evaluate the reading level of these health messages. The top three health articles from 79 local television news Web pages were selected for analysis. Readability was assessed using SMOG, Flesch-Kincaid (FK), and Flesch Reading Ease (FRE). A total of 278 articles were located over a two-day search. The majority of stories were national (47.0%) and educational (48.0%) pieces. Fewer articles were breaking news (19.8%). More articles focused on both prevention and treatment (30.6%) rather than on prevention (21.6%) or treatment (21.2%) alone. Mean readability was at a senior high school level according to SMOG (Grade 11.9) and FK (Grade 10.3). Overall FRE was 51.6, implying a "fairly difficult" reading style. As broadcast news media mobilizes viewers