Viewpoint of the General Population on Health-Related Recommendations: A Qualitative Content Analysis

The development of plain language recommendations has become a strategy to bridge the gap between evidence-based guidelines, primarily addressed to health professionals, and the public's understanding of health issues. Plain language recommendations aim to enhance health literacy and informed decision-making.

The main aim of our study was to explore views on the different versions of health-related recommendations.

Participants of our study were asked to share their experiences with reading and understanding health-related recommendations in the standard language version and plain language version. Data were collected in five focus groups and analysed by qualitative content analysis.

Four themes-accessibility, time, attractiveness, and trustworthiness-were established to describe factors influencing people's experience with health-related recommendations. People need to find and access the recommendation; to read it, they need time, which may be compensated by the topic's attractiveness. Participants perceived trust in the source as an important consideration when deciding whether to follow the recommendation.

To obtain specific information, most participants preferred the plain language version of the recommendation. However, some may prefer the standard language version for a more complex picture. Accessibility, time, attractiveness, and trustworthiness should be considered when developing health-related recommendations for various groups of care recipients and the general lay population. Our findings may contribute to the more effective development of plain language recommendations.