Readability of the Top 50 Prescribed Drugs in Wikipedia
|
If you are the presenter of this abstract (or if you cite this abstract in a talk or on a poster), please show the QR code in your slide or poster (QR code contains this URL). |
Abstract
Background: Wikipedia is one of the most frequently used resources by online health information seekers based on search rankings and page views. One benefit often ascribed to Wikipedia is its consumer-friendly content. However, the readability of Wikipedia’s drug information content has never been systematically evaluated. While the average reading level of most Americans is between 6th to 9th grade, the average American seeking health information on-line typically has a college education, and by extension a likely higher average reading level.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the readability of Wikipedia entries for commonly used medications using a novel measurement tool and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL).
Methods: The 50 most commonly prescribed drugs in the USA were identified and the corresponding Wikipedia entry pages were located and saved as HTML files for evaluation purposes. Two investigators independently analyzed each entry using FKGL and the author-developed health information readability analyzer (HIReA) was also employed. HIReA was developed, in part, to integrate dimensions other readability tools lacked including: lexical, syntactic, semantic, cohesion and style and yields values of -1 (very hard) to 1 (very easy). FKGL and HIReA scores were generated, recorded, and subsequently examined using descriptive statistics for the sample described.
Results: All of the top 50 drugs had entries in Wikipedia. The readability analysis yielded a mean FKGL of 15.4 for the Wikipedia entries, with a mean HIReA for the entries of -0.4999. The easiest to read entry by FKGL was for Dyazide (9.6), which was also the second easiest to read according to HIReA (-0.25). According to HIReA, Zestoretic (-0.17) was the least difficult to read. Those most favorably scored entries are both combination products. Alternately, the sample drug with most difficult readability value using FKGL was lansoprazole (19.8), whereas with HIReA the entry for hydrocodone (-0.845) was measured as the most difficult to read. Dimensional analyses from HIReA indicated the difficulty of the documents as primarily that of the semantic domain (i.e. hard vocabulary) (-0.8409) relative to cohesion (-0.5922), syntactic (-0.4845), lexical (0.0128), and style (0.0149).
Conclusion: The reading skills required for the 50 drug entries in Wikipedia are appreciably higher than the targeted levels for consumers as measured by both the FKGL and HIReA. The greatest hurdle to overcome for the readability of the entries is the semantic aspect. While all Wikipedia entries can be made more consumer-friendly by simplifying the vocabulary, this may be insufficient to achieve the target readability; the lexical and syntactic constructs need to be concurrently improved without loss in cohesion in order to truly enhance consumer comprehension.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the readability of Wikipedia entries for commonly used medications using a novel measurement tool and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL).
Methods: The 50 most commonly prescribed drugs in the USA were identified and the corresponding Wikipedia entry pages were located and saved as HTML files for evaluation purposes. Two investigators independently analyzed each entry using FKGL and the author-developed health information readability analyzer (HIReA) was also employed. HIReA was developed, in part, to integrate dimensions other readability tools lacked including: lexical, syntactic, semantic, cohesion and style and yields values of -1 (very hard) to 1 (very easy). FKGL and HIReA scores were generated, recorded, and subsequently examined using descriptive statistics for the sample described.
Results: All of the top 50 drugs had entries in Wikipedia. The readability analysis yielded a mean FKGL of 15.4 for the Wikipedia entries, with a mean HIReA for the entries of -0.4999. The easiest to read entry by FKGL was for Dyazide (9.6), which was also the second easiest to read according to HIReA (-0.25). According to HIReA, Zestoretic (-0.17) was the least difficult to read. Those most favorably scored entries are both combination products. Alternately, the sample drug with most difficult readability value using FKGL was lansoprazole (19.8), whereas with HIReA the entry for hydrocodone (-0.845) was measured as the most difficult to read. Dimensional analyses from HIReA indicated the difficulty of the documents as primarily that of the semantic domain (i.e. hard vocabulary) (-0.8409) relative to cohesion (-0.5922), syntactic (-0.4845), lexical (0.0128), and style (0.0149).
Conclusion: The reading skills required for the 50 drug entries in Wikipedia are appreciably higher than the targeted levels for consumers as measured by both the FKGL and HIReA. The greatest hurdle to overcome for the readability of the entries is the semantic aspect. While all Wikipedia entries can be made more consumer-friendly by simplifying the vocabulary, this may be insufficient to achieve the target readability; the lexical and syntactic constructs need to be concurrently improved without loss in cohesion in order to truly enhance consumer comprehension.
Medicine 2.0® is happy to support and promote other conferences and workshops in this area. Contact us to produce, disseminate and promote your conference or workshop under this label and in this event series. In addition, we are always looking for hosts of future World Congresses. Medicine 2.0® is a registered trademark of JMIR Publications Inc., the leading academic ehealth publisher.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.