Readability--its applicability to education of patients by pharmacy

The applicability of readability to the development of pharmacy educational materials is reviewed. The importance of reading skills must be recognized in all areas of education, including pharmacy patient education. If people are to perform certain tasks, they must understand the instructions for those tasks. To be understandable, the instructions must be written on the reading level of the people who will be following the instructions. Readability has been defined as those characteristics of reading materials, involving certain mental processes, that make for ease or difficulty of comprehension of the reading material. It is the task of the reader to use as few or as many of these mental processes as necessary to grasp the intended meaning of the material. It has been estimated that the average reading level of the American public is approximately 7th to 8th grade. However, many adults do not have sufficient reading skills to comprehend fully material written on these levels. Therefore, pharmacy educational material should be written on the reading level of the patient population it serves. Several readability formulas have been developed to evaluate the various characteristics of reading material that lead to reading comprehension. Among the ones recommended for use with pharmacy educational materials are the Fry Readability Graph and the Gunning Fog Index.