November 16, 2020

Readability of Online COVID-19 Health Information: A Comparison between Four English Speaking Countries

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Public Health Policy and Practice

Keywords (Tags): public health

A study evaluating the readability of online information from Google search results related to COVID-19 found that only 17.2% of webpages were presented at a universally-readable level. The first 20 webpage URLs for searches for “COVID”, “COVID-19”, and “coronavirus” from multiple predominantly English-speaking countries were evaluated on several readability assessment tools. There was a significant difference in readability based on the site’s information source, with public health and government organizations presenting the most readable material.

Worrall et al. (Dec 13, 2020). Readability of Online COVID-19 Health Information: A Comparison between Four English Speaking Countries. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09710-5