Functional endoscopic sinus surgery: assessing the readability and quality of online information.
Raja, H Patel, K
Raja, H
Patel, K
Abstract
Introduction: The aim of this study was to assess the readability and quality of online information on functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS).
Methods: The term 'functional endoscopic sinus surgery' was entered into the Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines. The first 30 websites for each search engine were screened. Readability was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score (FRES), Flesch-Kincaid Grade (FKG), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) Index, and Gunning Fog Index (GFI). Quality was assessed using the DISCERN instrument. Spearman's correlation between quality and readability was calculated.
Results: Thirty-three websites met the inclusion criteria. The mean and standard deviations for the FRES, FKG, SMOG, GFI, and DISCERN scores were 49 (13.1), 10.9 (2.5), 10.2 (1.9), 13.6 (2.4), and 51.1 (12.8), respectively. A positive correlation was noted between the FRES and DISCERN (R=0.357, p=0.041).
Conclusions: Online information on FESS is generally written above the recommended reading levels and of fair quality.
MIDER Authors
Citations
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Date
2022-11-14
Type
Article
Subject
Surgery
Citation
Raja H, Patel K. Functional endoscopic sinus surgery: assessing the readability and quality of online information. Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2022 Nov 14. doi: 10.1308/rcsann.2022.0123. Epub ahead of print
Journal / Source Title
Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
DOI
10.1308/rcsann.2022.0123
PMID
36374281
Publisher
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publisher’s URL
http://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/journal/ann
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/386/