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Readability assessment of online men’s health education materials from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, American Urologic Association, and European Association of Urology

International Journal of Impotence Research volume 35, pages 758–760 (2023)Cite this article

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The accessibility and prevalence of online health information available to patients has grown exponentially. With an estimated 50% of US adults having an average education and literacy comparable to the seventh-eighth grade, professional health associations including the American Medical Association (AMA), National Institute of Health (NIH), and Joint Commission (JCAHO) have advocated for patient education materials (PEM’s) to be written at or below the fifth and seventh-grade level [1, 2].

Patients with sexual health complaints may be wary of discussing their symptoms with healthcare professionals, relying instead upon online sources for anonymous and free insight. Unfortunately, existing literature has demonstrated that most PEMs online exceed the comprehension of patients reading them and has subsequently been linked to increased risk of hospitalization, poor overall health status, treatment compliance, and 4-fold financial cost [3]. We aimed to describe the readability of online content specific to sexual health topics published from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA), Urology Care Foundation (AUA), and European Association of Urology (EAU).

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Fig. 1: Average grade-level readability for each online men’s health topic and source.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study can be prepared if requested in additional information files.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Urology Institute, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Michael Callegari, Erin Jesse, Megan Prunty, Aram Loeb, Nannan Thirumavalavan & Ramy Abou-Ghayda

  2. University of Buffalo, Jacobs School of Medicine, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Raymond Pominville

  3. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Christopher Zhou

  4. Wright State University, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton, OH, USA

    Brandon Piyevsky

Authors
  1. Michael Callegari
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  2. Raymond Pominville
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  3. Christopher Zhou
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  4. Brandon Piyevsky
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  5. Erin Jesse
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  6. Megan Prunty
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  7. Aram Loeb
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  8. Nannan Thirumavalavan
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  9. Ramy Abou-Ghayda
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Contributions

MC conceived the study and was in charge of overall direction and planning. EJ, MP performed the material gathering as well as the computations and designed the figures. RP, CZ, and BP contributed to the final form of the manuscript and literature review of the project. AL, NT, RAG verified the analytical methods and overall direction of the manuscript. AL encouraged MC to investigate readability and supervised the findings of this work. All authors provided critical feedback and helped shape the research, analysis and manuscript. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Callegari.

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Callegari, M., Pominville, R., Zhou, C. et al. Readability assessment of online men’s health education materials from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, American Urologic Association, and European Association of Urology. Int J Impot Res 35, 758–760 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-022-00609-w

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