Prostate cancer websites too hard to read

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CHICAGO, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Despite 90 million U.S. adults reading below the high-school level, few cancer websites are written to meet their reading abilities, researchers found.

Dr. Gopal Gupta and colleagues Loyola University Medical Center near Chicago and colleagues identified 62 websites by searching for "prostate cancer," "prostate cancer treatment" and "prostatectomy" -- prostate removal -- on Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines.

To assess readability, researchers used the Flesch-Kincaid test, which measures the reading grade level, and the Flesch reading ease test, which assigns a readability score of 0 to 100. The tests are based on formulas that incorporate total number of words, sentences and syllables.

A score of 90 to 100 would be easily understood by an 11-year-old; a score of 60 to 70 would be understood by 13- to-15-year-olds; and scores 30 and lower would be suited to college graduates.

The study, published in the Journal of Urology, 63 percent of the sites were written above a 12th-grade reading level, and the median Flesch reading ease score for all sites a relatively difficult 38.1.

Websites with the easiest readability scores were News-Medical Net at the eighth-grade level, Consumer Reports.org at 8.9, Family Doctor.org at 8.95, UPMC Cancer Centers at 9.2 and National Institute Health's Pubmed Health at 9.8.

"It was discouraging to find that only 4.8 percent of these sites had information written for those below a high school reading level," Gupta, the senior author, and his colleagues said. "No sites in our study were written at the fourth- to sixth-grade level recommended by the NIH."