Izvorni znanstveni članak
Development of SMOG-Cro Readability Formula for Healthcare Communication and Patient Education
Sanja Brangan
; skusec@snz.hr
Sažetak
Effective communication shows a positive impact on patient satisfaction, compliance and medical outcomes, at the
same time reducing the healthcare costs. Written information for patients needs to correspond to health literacy levels of
the intended audiences. Readability formulas correlate well with the reading and comprehension tests but are considered
an easier and quicker method to estimate a text diffi culty. SMOG readability formula designed for English language
needs to be modifi ed if used for texts in other languages. The aim of this study was to develop a readability formula based
on SMOG, that could be used to estimate text diffi culty of written materials for patients in Croatian language. Contrastive
analysis of English and Croatian language covering a corpus of almost 100,000 running words showed clear linguistic
differences in the number of polysyllabic words. The new formula, named SMOG-Cro, is presented as an equation:
SMOG-Cro =2+√4+ syllables, with the score showing the number of years of education a person needs to be able to understand
a piece of writing. The presented methodology could help in the development of readability formulas for other
languages. We hope the results of this study are soon put into practice for more effective healthcare communication and
patient education, and for development of a health literacy assessment tool in Croatian language.
Ključne riječi
doctor-patient communication; patient education; readability formulas; SMOG; health literacy; patientcentred health care
Hrčak ID:
147673
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.3.2015.
Posjeta: 1.703 *