Next Meeting

1) Had anyone heard of the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook and Flesch-Kincaid measurements before? What do you know about them?

2) Are these measurements comparable? Is either a good choice for comparison of consumer health materials?

3) Are these reading level measurements sensitive enough for health/medical materials?  

4) Is it worth the extra time to run a hand scoring literacy measure?

5) 8% (9/11)of the custom-designed (by the health authority) patient education materials scored above 6^th grade reading level in the Flesch-Kincaid assessment, and 100% scored above the 6^th grade reading level using SMOG, it is important that literacy assessments of patient education materials are conducted. How could the library help in hospital and during the education of healthcare providers?

6) Patient and Family Resource Centres in hospitals offer patient education materials that are usually provided to them by other publishers, either internal to the hospital or from trusted sources. Should periodic assessments of these materials be done by the librarians and with which or how many measurements? How do we get the publishers to adhere to the 6^th grade level?