A Critical Assessment of the Readability and Ethnic Inclusivity of Online Patient Materials for Microtia.

Objective: Online patient education resources need to be at an acceptable reading level for public consumption and should capture the diversity of the patient population they are intended for. The purpose of this study was to assess the suitability of online materials for microtia. Design: Performed...

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Publicado en:Cleft Palate Craniofacial Journal Vol. 63; no. 9; pp. 2719 - 2727
Autores principales: Boroumand, Sam, Aquilina, Sydney R., Gu, Emily, Carrillo, Gabriel, Goss, Jeremy A., Allam, Omar, Alperovich, Michael
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. Sep2026
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Sep2026
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        atl: A Critical Assessment of the Readability and Ethnic Inclusivity of Online Patient Materials for Microtia.
      aug:
        au:
          Boroumand, Sam
          Aquilina, Sydney R.
          Gu, Emily
          Carrillo, Gabriel
          Goss, Jeremy A.
          Allam, Omar
          Alperovich, Michael
        affil: Division of Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
      sug:
        subj:
          Readability
          Ethnic Groups
          Social Inclusion
          Ear Diseases
          Ear, External Abnormalities
          Patient Education
          Teaching Materials Evaluation
          Consumer Health Information Standards
          Internet
          Reliability
          Human
          United States
          Cross Sectional Studies
          Descriptive Statistics
          Data Analysis Software
          One-Way Analysis of Variance
          Post Hoc Analysis
          Comparative Studies
          kappa Statistic
          Scales
          Health Literacy
          Literature Searching
          Benchmarking
          World Wide Web Standards
          Interrater Reliability
      ab: Objective: Online patient education resources need to be at an acceptable reading level for public consumption and should capture the diversity of the patient population they are intended for. The purpose of this study was to assess the suitability of online materials for microtia. Design: Performed cross-sectional survey and inventory of Google search results for "microtia." Setting: Performed online internet search. Patients, Participants: n/a Interventions: n/a Main Outcome Measures: The readability of each site was evaluated utilizing 6 different validated readability instruments and their quality was assessed with the JAMA Benchmark criteria. The proportion of sites containing visual patient representations of microtia was noted and the Fitzpatrick scale was employed to assess for diversity of this representation. Results: From the 99 unique sites identified, 40 were from academic hospitals, 32 were by private hospitals/physicians, 15 were government/non-profit organizations, and 12 were third-party informational sites. Microtia material found online was written at over a 10th grade reading level which is well-above the NIH/AMA recommended 6th grade reading level; third-party informational sites had the highest average JAMA Benchmark scores (2.33 ± 1.30, P <.01). 43.4% of identified microtia sites included some type of microtia illustrations and only 27.3% included representation other than White. Conclusions: The patient education materials for microtia found on hospital and organization websites exceed the complexity appropriate for general medical information consumption. Efforts should be made to make material more readable for the general public and illustrations should be more representative given the condition's higher prevalence among ethnic minorities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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