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2016 ; 23
(2
): 269-75
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Assessing the readability of ClinicalTrials gov
#MMPMID26269536
Wu DT
; Hanauer DA
; Mei Q
; Clark PM
; An LC
; Proulx J
; Zeng QT
; Vydiswaran VG
; Collins-Thompson K
; Zheng K
J Am Med Inform Assoc
2016[Mar]; 23
(2
): 269-75
PMID26269536
show ga
OBJECTIVE: ClinicalTrials.gov serves critical functions of disseminating trial
information to the public and helping the trials recruit participants. This study
assessed the readability of trial descriptions at ClinicalTrials.gov using
multiple quantitative measures. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The analysis included all
165,988 trials registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as of April 30, 2014. To obtain
benchmarks, the authors also analyzed 2 other medical corpora: (1) all 955 Health
Topics articles from MedlinePlus and (2) a random sample of 100,000 clinician
notes retrieved from an electronic health records system intended for conveying
internal communication among medical professionals. The authors characterized
each of the corpora using 4 surface metrics, and then applied 5 different scoring
algorithms to assess their readability. The authors hypothesized that clinician
notes would be most difficult to read, followed by trial descriptions and
MedlinePlus Health Topics articles. RESULTS: Trial descriptions have the longest
average sentence length (26.1 words) across all corpora; 65% of their words used
are not covered by a basic medical English dictionary. In comparison, average
sentence length of MedlinePlus Health Topics articles is 61% shorter, vocabulary
size is 95% smaller, and dictionary coverage is 46% higher. All 5 scoring
algorithms consistently rated CliniclTrials.gov trial descriptions the most
difficult corpus to read, even harder than clinician notes. On average, it
requires 18 years of education to properly understand these trial descriptions
according to the results generated by the readability assessment algorithms.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Trial descriptions at CliniclTrials.gov are extremely
difficult to read. Significant work is warranted to improve their readability in
order to achieve CliniclTrials.gov's goal of facilitating information
dissemination and subject recruitment.