ArticleCureus2025
Assessing the Readability, Quality, and Reliability of Online Patient Information Materials Related to Sarcopenia.
Article in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThis study aimed to evaluate the readability, quality, and reliability of online patient education materials (PEM) related to sarcopenia. MATERIALS AND
methodsIn August 2024, 278 websites obtained by searching the term 'sarcopenia' on Google were evaluated. After applying the exclusion criteria, 66 websites were included in the study. The ranks of the websites were evaluated with Blexb (New York, USA), readability evaluations were done with calculators, and quality and reliability were evaluated per the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Global Quality Scale (GQS), and modified Decision Index for Systematic Consumer Evaluation of Reviewed Narratives (DISCERN) criteria.
resultsThe readability values of the contents were compared with the 6th-grade level (GRL), and all results were significantly higher than the 6th GRL (p<0.01). The median values in the readability assessment of the 66 websites included in the study were as follows: Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) 40.81 (6.10-72.84), Gunning Fog (GFOG) 14.78 (9.10-22.20), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) 12.18 (7.16-18.58), Coleman-Liau (CL) score 12.89 (7.14-18.45), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) 12.34 (7.77-17.65), Automated Readability Index (ARI) 12.49 (7.70-19.64), Linsear Write (LW) 13.30 (6.89-25.05), and GRL 15.25 (8.00-23.00). The types of websites were compared in terms of readability levels, and no significant difference was found. When the website typologies were compared, no significant difference was observed in GQS, JAMA, and DISCERN. A low-level negative correlation was found between Blexb rank and JAMA. The correlations between Blexb rank and readability scales were as follows: weak negative correlation with FRES and ARI scores and weak positive correlation with GFOG, FKGL, CL, and SMOG scores (p<0.05).
conclusionThe best category in terms of readability, reliability, and quality was determined to be health portals, but none of the websites had readability at or below the recommended 6th GRL.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.