Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-17-2017
Abstract
Purpose: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. A decline in deaths caused by CRC has been largely attributable to screening and prompt treatment. Motivation, shown to influence cancer-related screening and treatment decisions, can be shaped by information from the Internet. The extent to which this information is easily readable on cancer-related websites is not known. The purpose of this study was to assess the readability levels of CRC information on 100 websites.
Methods: Using methods from a prior study, the keyword, “colorectal cancer,” was searched on a cleared Internet browser. Scores for each website (n = 100) were generated using five commonly recommended readability tests.
Results: All five tests demonstrated difficult readability for the majority of the websites.
Conclusions: Online information related to CRC is difficult to read and highlights the need for developing cancer-related online material that is understandable to a wider audience.
Comments
This article was originally published in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, available at DOI: 10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_95_18.
This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.