Tag Archives: Information Literacy

Journal Club – Computerized versus hand-scored health literacy tools: a comparison of Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) and Flesch-Kincaid in printed patient education materials

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Meeting Date: January 27, 2021

Presenter: Brianna Howell-Spooner

Article: Grabeel KL, Russomanno J, Oelschlegel S, Tester E, Heidel RE. Computerized versus hand-scored health literacy tools: a comparison of Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) and Flesch-Kincaid in printed patient education materials. J Med Libr Assoc. 2018 Jan;106(1):38-45. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2018.262. Epub 2018 Jan 2. PMID: 29339932; PMCID: PMC5764592.

Questions:

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

  • Never heard of them.
  • Yes, SMOG
  • Yes, Flesch-Kincaid

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

  • Not comparable
  • Hand scoring is more manipulable,
  • “Hand-scoring patient education materials allows evaluators to work directly with the text, alerting them to multisyllabic words and long sentences”
  • Flesch-Kincaid could be done by hand but it would be too much work
  • Electronic is more feasible because it’s built into the word processors, but the hand-scored one is more accurate if done correctly
  • The graphic layout can throw off the mathematics
  • Period and decimal would be read the same, electronic -1 CHI

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

  • SMOG seems like a blunt instrument, based on =>3-syllable words, certain medical condition’s names are much longer
    • Greater chance for a higher grade level
  • What was Flesch-Kincaid first developed for? Was it for literacy grading in actuality or just a theoretical model? This will affect its measurement capabilities

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

  • Context, if a practitioner is meeting with someone they know has the literacy level, no problems
  • Practitioners need to be aware, levels stated could be wrong or could be area dependent (university reading level, but in Law)
  • The materials which a patient can pick up independently of communication with a medical practitioner are where you want to see the proper scoring for literacy levels
    • No chance for the practitioner to check understanding
  • Really need to know your audience
  • New disease, you’re going to want to make sure that the information is at the lowest common denominator for literacy to the widest audience
  • Dangerous to assume level, need to be careful
  • The fault of the health practitioner, not explaining the whole context,
    • Health practitioner need to learn how to teach health information
    • Don’t have the skills, to talk to the patient to give them the right/correct/contextual information

5) 81.8% (9/11)of the custom-designed (by the health authority) patient education materials scored above 6th grade reading level in the Flesch-Kincaid assessment, and 100% scored above the 6th 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?

  • Used to sit on the committee (CEAC) for giving input on the information itself (not grade level)
  • Could work on this again now that we’ve amalgamated?
  • NS health authority does include health materials for patients

6) Patient and Family Resource Centres 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? How do/can we, as librarians, get others to adhere to the 6th grade level?

  • Agreement which instrument to use? Do we average them?
    • F-K is easier but is it the most accurate?
  • Committees don’t like using external, like to personalize them to SK patient in front of them
    • Are they looking at our resources at the library for patient education?
  • Some of our resources at the library are customizable
  • What grade level do we tell them to adhere to?
  • Does the MLA, ALA even have a grade reading level cut off for literacy? Health literacy?

Thoughts? Opinions? Snacks?

  • What roll do we as librarians might play with CHI resources?
  • New learning
  • One member is going to forward information to instructors for a course she’s helping with
  • Applicable to Sask, demographically
  • Yes! Maybe academic librarians can somehow embed this into the curriculum of nursing and medical students. Teach them how to identify the appropriate resources and reading level and to speak at that level with their future patients. They should be trained on that from the beginning

Journal Club – The Application of Internet-Based Sources for Public Health Surveillance (Infoveillance): Systematic Review

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Meeting Date: September 21, 2020

Presenter: Mark Mueller

Article: Barros JM, Duggan J, Rebholz-Schuhmann D. The Application of Internet-Based Sources for Public Health Surveillance (Infoveillance): Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res 2020;22(3):e13680 https://www.jmir.org/2020/3/e13680/

Questions:

1) What do the authors mean by infodemiology or infoveillance? What does this look like in practice?

• Science of distribution and determinents of information, particularly the internet to inform public health and public policy
• Sharing and searching information
• Scientists using it predict the spread of COVID-19 previously
• Sources used to extract data: social; discussion forums; mobile apps (i.e. COVID-19 tracker app); other sources search queries; news articles; websites; media monitoring systems; web encyclopaedias; online obituaries

2) What is the potential value in using Internet-Based-Resources to study the course of a disease or an outbreak?

• Real-time data and discern health-related concerns; and developed responses
• No infrastructure to obscure information. Less barriers. More representative of various population groups and country-specific phenomenon
• Accelerate resolutions (i.e. treatments, economic resolutions, resource sharing, etc.)
• Insights into how disease is affecting and/or being discussed
• Topic analyses
• Can be used to monitor what information is being shared and when

3) What are the potential limitations in using Internet-Based Resources to study the course of a disease or an outbreak?

• Difficulty accessing the internet (particularly in developing countries) – data may not be complete and knowledge gaps
• Potential that information could be fabricated (misinformation)
• Bots/trolls may make false information/claims
• Information could be lost in translation – semantics could be lost
• Misinformation being shared, Google trends does not provide demographic data

4) Do you think it might be possible to work this research approach into our daily workflow as librarians; particularly for those of us who might be part of a COVID-19 response effort? If so, why? If not, why not?

• Create infographics
• Can detect where the misinformation is coming from – address the misinformation at the point-of-need

5) Could this research approach be applied to other contexts and/or topics related to library work? Example: monitoring other topics within the medical/healthcare community; combating fake news; etc.

• Community trends for topics that come up in the reference queue (i.e. health concerns, new courses)?
• To address misinformation would require professionalization in medicine, ethics, etc. that go beyond our scope

Journal Club: What does a librarian do on sabbatical?: researching the IL needs of international students at the University of Zambia (UNZA)

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Meeting Date: Nov 29 2019 | 2:00pm – 3:00pm UTC

Presenter: Mary Chipanshi

Background: International students contribute a significant boost to the economy of every university.  It is well documented that students coming to a new university find themselves dealing with different challenges.  The literature has identifies that one of the challenges faced by these students in a new university is navigating the library. It is therefore imperative that academic libraries find strategies to assist these students adjust to their new environment.  In order to accomplish this effectively, librarians and libraries needs to know the student’s prior library experience. This study was conducted at the University of Zambia, using focus groups. A total of 22 students participated in the focus groups.  Students were asked questions related to their experience using UNZA library with regard to searching for information for assignments, using information ethically and evaluating the information. Preliminary results indicate that most of the students use the internet to find resources for their assignments and prefer to consult colleagues instead of a librarian. The library is also viewed more as a reading space than a place they can get resources.  They also understood the importance of crediting resources and plagiarism. The results of this project is of benefit to all those working with international students.

Questions:

1. With the librarian program in UNZA is it an undergrad? What’s the training for the students?

It’s ALA accredited program for undergrad, with that degree you can go do your masters. You have to go out of country to do a masters.

2. Do you have to have the master to be a librarian in the university?

You can work in the library as a librarian (because you have a BA in Library Studies) but to get a promotion you need to have a masters.

3. Would you like to go back and do more research?

Having to self-fund the project meant that it was quite costly, so unfortunately probably not. She would try to get funding if she did it again.

4. Do you how much outreach HINARI does? How often?

They go all over the world to train and they go quite often. They’ve been to Zambia 3 times. Their method is to train one librarian at an institution so that librarian can go and teach the other librarians to train students and faculty. Unfortunately, many librarians don’t have the time, so the faculty members and student don’t know about the services offered by HINARI. Users need id and password to access, which the librarians would need to pass onto to the faculty and students.

5. Is there a website for the library?

The librarians wanted to learn about libguides to push out these tools because the current website is the instituional website.

6. Would you want to do a follow-up study on the library changes after your workshops with the faculty?

Maybe, probably to see what happened with the libguides and kahooit

Thoughts

It’s neat that you can do the undergrad at UNZA

Important to understand how international students understand and use information

Could do a follow-up study here (UofR) on other international students