TITLE:
Reading Levels of Leaflets of Common Over-the-Counter Drugs in Ghana
AUTHORS:
William Kodom Gyasi, Lawrence Kwadwo Owusu-Ansah, Marian Amponsaah Frimpong
KEYWORDS:
Health Communication, Readability, Lexical Density, Syntactical Complexity, Readability Formula, Patient Information Leaflets
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.13 No.5,
May
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Health communication is
critical component of effective health delivery. While there are studies on the readability
Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) around the world, so far, there is only one
Ghanaian study that explored the language of patient information leaflets for
malaria. The present study explores the language of PILs of seven common
ailments in Ghana. In all, 68 leaflets were purposely sampled for the study.
Using SMOG and Flesch Kincaid grade level readability formulae, the researcher
measured the readability of PILs and discovered that the readability of all the
PILs was difficult to read except the dewormer leaflets that scored standard
reading score. Further statistical analysis reveal that the lexical and
syntactic complexity of the leaflets were not statistically different. Finally,
an interview with 20 patients confirmed that the leaflets are difficult to read
due to the complex words and long sentence structures. It is recommended that
the PILs be revised to make the leaflets readable.