Al-Kharouf KFK, Khan FI, Robertson GA. Assessing the readability of online information about jones fracture. World J Methodol 2023; 13(5): 439-445 [PMID: 38229937 DOI: 10.5662/wjm.v13.i5.439]
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Faisal Idrees Khan, Internal Medicine, Tunbridge Wells Hospital, Tunbridge Wells E10 5NJ, United Kingdom
Greg AJ Robertson, Orthopaedic Surgery, Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth PO6 3LY, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Al-Kharouf KFK conceived the methodology for the manuscript, performed the literature search and analysis for the study, and wrote the manuscript; Khan FI performed the literature search and analysis for the study and wrote the manuscript; Robertson GA advised on the study, and reviewed and edited the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: Not required, no human or animal involved in our study.
Informed consent statement: The dataset consisted of anonymized synthesize evidence from published studies. Thus, no informed consent for data sharing was required.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Khaled Farid Khaled Al-Kharouf, Faisal Idrees Khan, and Greg Robertson have no conflicts of interest to declare. None have received fees for serving as a speaker or a consultant for commercial organizations. None have received research funding from commercial organizations. All are employees of the UK National Health Service, though not of any commercial organizations. None own stocks or shares in related commercial organizations. None own patent related to the topic of this study.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix and datasets are available from the corresponding author at kfk990@gmail.com.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Received: March 26, 2023 Peer-review started: March 26, 2023 First decision: May 15, 2023 Revised: July 6, 2023 Accepted: September 14, 2023 Article in press: September 14, 2023 Published online: December 20, 2023 Processing time: 268 Days and 17.5 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: With technological advancements, many patients look toward the internet as their primary source of information to learn about their respective medical conditions. The American Medical Association and National Institute of Health strongly recommend that online medical information be written at the 6th to 8th-grade level to aid comprehension by patients of all literacy backgrounds. Readability measures how easy a piece of text is to read. This, in turn, affects how much information people can understand and retain. Our study aims to assess the readability of online information regarding Jones fracture. A total of 93 websites were analyzed for reading assessment. The overall mean average grade level of all websites in the study was 10.95230 ± 2.27862, corresponding to a 10th-grade reading level. In Conclusion, most of the medical information evaluated was at an 11th-grade level, far exceeding AMA and NIH recommendations.
