Who and how assesses patient education material?: Literature review on evaluation index

<p>Objective</p><p>To clarify the latest evaluation indices and employed scales capable of systematically evaluating patient education material to utilize these in the evaluation of “Midwifery Guidelines for Pregnant Women Giving Birth and Their Families.”</p><p>Subjects and Methods</p><p>A search of the literature was conducted using the web version of Igaku Chuo Zasshi and PubMed. Papers describing the evaluation of patient education material were extracted based on titles, abstracts, and whole manuscripts. The extracted papers were sorted according to the type of patient education material, evaluators, evaluated domains, and evaluated items.</p><p>Results</p><p>Twelve papers were extracted, of which 3 were regarding the evaluation of audiovisual education material and 10 were regarding the evaluation of text-based education material. One paper evaluated both audiovisual and text-based education materials. The evaluations of patient education material differed in the evaluated domain and scale used according to the type of education material. In particular, the evaluations of the readability of text-based patient education material involved scores such as the Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), while other domains were evaluated using the DISCERN instrument, the LIDA instrument, the Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT-P), and the Visual Aesthetics of Websites Inventory (VisAWI). Evaluations were performed by two evaluators for all of the papers. In the evaluations of text-based education materials, evaluation from multiple domains using scales according to the purpose of the patient education material was found to be necessary, in addition to evaluating readability.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>We will further examine the use of readability evaluation scales and the Japanese version of the PEMAT, which can evaluate comprehensibility and ease of actions, for the purpose of evaluating “midwifery guidelines for pregnant women giving birth and their families.”</p>