Differences in perceived difficulty in print and online patient education materials

Written patient education materials frequently exceed the reading ability of the general public. Patients are often intimidated by the task of reading patient education materials, perceiving the materials’ difficulty levels as prohibitive, even when they do not exceed the patients’ reading abilities. It is unclear how the delivery mechanism--print or a computer screen--affects a patient’s reading experience through his/her perception of its difficulty.

To determine whether first-year college students perceived online or print-based patient education materials as more difficult to read.

Convenience sampling of first-year college students.

Some first-year college students perceived online patient education materials to be more difficult to read than print-based ones--even when the reading level of the patient education materials was similar. Demographic information about this sample’s high levels of digital literacy suggests that other populations might also perceive online patient education materials as more difficult to read than print-based equivalents. Patients’ perceptions of the difficulty of patient education materials influenced their ability to effectively learn from those materials.

This article concludes with a call for more research into patients’ perceptions of difficulty of patient education materials in print vs on a screen.