Evaluating the clarity of research reports written for research subjects

It is not simple to report research results to the people who participated in the research as subjects of study. Few evaluations have examined subjects' understanding of written research findings. In two recent studies of solvent exposure, subjects received brief summaries of the research. Before they were sent, the summaries were evaluated by research, health, and communication specialists as well as by representatives of the target audience. For one of the studies, interviews were conducted with subjects before and after they received the reports. Although the subjects said they understood the summary, their answers to questions about its content indicated otherwise. The results suggest that researchers not rely on subjects' self-assessments of their understanding but instead design methods to test subjects' knowledge directly. Those tests would be most valuable if applied in formative evaluations, when the opportunity exists to improve the research summaries.