Evaluation Methods of Public Health Education Materials (Coursework Sample)

Evaluation Methods of Public Health Education Materials Name Course Tutor University City and State Date Evaluation Methods of Public Health Education Materials Introduction The prevention of diseases among individuals and populations is a fundamental part of public health education (Jewitt et al. 2015; Peterson et al. 2012). The knowledge possessed by people in the general population has an influence on their ability to prevent the development and transmission of diseases. Efforts are made to improve the awareness and knowledge of people on the causes, transmission, prevention and treatment of diseases. When the right tools and materials are used to pass these messages, it leads to an increase in the health literacy of the population. However, for this to be effective, the right materials have to be developed to be able to pass public health messages that are valid, relevant, suitable, and comprehensible to the target audience (Sørensen et al. 2012; Strachan & Booth 2015). Therefore, it is important to understand the different methods that can be used to evaluate the readability, suitability, and relevance of the education materials that are developed for public health education (Hansberry et al. 2014). This paper outlines some of the methods that are used to evaluate public health education materials to determine their suitability and readability. Literature Search Literature search was carried out through several databases for articles published from the year 2001 and 2016 on the methods used for evaluation of public health materials. In the JAMA journal, the search used the search strings: "evaluation methods of public health materials" and "assessment of health education materials”. After retrieving and reading the abstracts, two articles were retrieved for review in this paper. The second search was carried out through the ScHARR database. The search strings used were: "readability assessment of public health education materials”, "evaluation of public health education materials”, and "suitability assessment of health education materials”. These searches generated a total of 209 articles. The abstracts of these articles were retrieved and read to assess the relevance of the paper. A total of 28 article were found to be relevant and were retrieved. These were used to discuss the evaluation methods of public health materials in this paper. Readability of Materials The measure of the difficulty in comprehension of a health education material is referred as readability. The methods of assessing the readability of an education material encompass the use of formulas to assess the language used in the development of the material (Rudd 2011; Wilson 2009). The methods evaluate the sentence structure and the difficulty of the language used in the material. The evaluation of the readability of materials is important in ascertaining whether the given public health material can be understood and followed by the target audience. Several methods are available for assessing the readability of materials but only a few are discussed (Badarudeen & Sabharwal 2010; Hamby & Ickes 2015). They are categorised into two major groups of computerised and hand generated methods. In evaluating the readability of public health education materials, it is recommended that one should use more than one of the methods available to be able to generate a more valid result. Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) This a method that is used to measure the difficulty of reading the text. It measures how easy a given document is to read based on the sentence length and the syllables in the words. This gives a readability score from 0 to 100, with scores nearer to 100 indicating easy while those nearer to 0 indicating that the text is difficult to read (Badarudeen & Sabharwal 2010; Keogh & McHugh 2013). This means that a higher Flesch reading ease score for a public health education material is an indication that the document is easy to read. This method is inversely related to the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, such that, a higher Flesch reading ease leads to a lower Flesch-Kincaid grade level. The formula for calculating the Flesch reading ease is 206.835 – 1.015(total words÷ total sentences) – 84.6 (total syllables ÷total words) (Mesmer, 2008). The FRE method is used when evaluating the readability of text in a material to determine how easy or difficult the target audience will find reading the document. It is applied easily in combination with the Flesch-Kincaid Grade level to better understand the readability of the document. A study evaluating the readability of patient education materials based on the internet found they were fairly difficult to read from the FRE score. Their grade level was established at a 13.5 median based on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level (De Oliveira et al. 2015). The Flesch-Kincaid grade level is discussed in the following section. The advantage of the FRE method is that it is available widely in the Microsoft Word processor. It is also easy to use in the software. The limitation of the Flesch Reading Ease is that the score generated from the FRE analysis might pose a difficulty in interpretation as it has a negative correlation to other readability scores. It is also available only for text written in English (Badarudeen & Sabharwal 2010; Mesmer 2008). Flesch-Kincaid Grade level This is a computerised method that assesses the readability of written material. It is one of the most commonly used methods that presents the general number of years required for a person to comprehend the text in the education material. This figure is presented in terms of a grade level in the United States. The method calculates the grade level of a written material with the use of a formula: 0.39(total number of words ÷number of sentences) + 11.8 (total number of syllables ÷total number of words) -15.59. This formula presents grades from zero to seventeen. It can be used to manually calculate the grade level of the education material or the computer version can be used as a better alternative. Microsoft Word software has the formula for the Flesch-Kincaid grade level measure inbuilt for its users. This method is used when testing whether the public health education material created is comprehensive for the target population. This is useful to ensure that the material can be comprehended by all the people in the population. The recommended score for the readability of education materials based on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level is fifth to sixth grade (Hill-Briggs 2012). Several studies have been carried out to evaluate public health education materials’ readability. This includes the study to evaluate the readability of materials used in educating populations in low-income areas in America. The study found that the mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level for the health materials was 7.01(Wilson 2009). A different study found a mean of 11.1 for the grade level score for health information on the internet, which is greater than the recommended 5th-grade level (Polishchuk et al. 2012). To find a valid grade score for a public health education material, it is necessary to carry out a readability assessment using more than one method and analyse the results to find any significant differences between the scores (Wilson 2009). The Flesch-Kincaid Grade level method is easy to use, convenient, simple and cost-effective. It is found in installed computer word processing software including Microsoft Word, which is widely used (Mesmer 2008; Polishchuk et al. 2012). However, this method does not consider individual factors that can determine the comprehension ability of an individual including the use of pictures, tables and figures in the material. It also cannot measure an individual’s literacy level, which varies depending on the education, and experience of the reader (Polishchuk et al. 2012). This method has been found to underestimate the difficulty of the text (Mesmer 2008). The Fry Readability Graph This method is used to assess the readability of the text in an education written material by the use of three 100-words samples selected from the text. These samples are then analysed for the average number of syllables and sentences, which are then referred on the Fry graph to determine the grade level of the writing. Three samples of 100 words each are selected from the text. The number of sentences and syllables are then counted for each of the samples. These figures are then referred on the Fry graph with the average sentence length of each sample against the average number of syllables. The point at which these figures meet gives the grade level of the text. The Fry readability graph is used when determining the readability of text that is lengthy in terms of words. It is used to determine the reading difficulty of written material in terms of the grade level. It assesses the length of the sentences and the vocabulary difficulty as determined by the number of syllables. The assessment method is simple to use. It can be well suited to evaluate the readability of health education materials that are long in terms of content. It can be used manually to generate the readability grade of the given health material. In addition, the method can be used to assess the readability of health material that is written in different languages (Badarudeen & Sabharwal 2010). It also has a high correlation with other methods of evaluating the readability of text. The disadvantage of the Fry Readability Graph methods is that it requires manual calculations since software for the calculation of the grade level are not readily available. New Dale-Chall This method was developed specifically to evaluate the readability of health materials (Badarudeen & Sabharwal 2010). ...