Readability of Self-Report Alcohol Misuse Measures

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Objective: Self-report measures of alcohol misuse and alcohol use disorders are valuable assessment tools for both research and clinical practice settings. However, readability is often overlooked when establishing the validity of these measures, which may result in measures written at a reading-grade level that is higher than the ability level of many potential respondents. The aim of the current study was to estimate the reading-grade level of validated measures of alcohol misuse and associated problems. Method: A total of 45 measures were identifi ed, and reading-grade level was calculated using three validated readability formulas. Results: The majority of measures were written above the recommended reading-grade level for patient materials (5th-6th grade), with particularly poor readability for measure instructions. Conclusions: Given that many self-report alcohol misuse measures are written at a high reading-grade level, the consideration of readability is important when selecting measures for use in research and practice settings. Moreover, the development or modifi cation of measures to target low-literacy populations may facilitate the broader applicability of these instruments. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 75, 328-334, 2014)

“It is not just about the alcohol”: service users’ views about individualised and standardised clinical assessment in a therapeutic community for alcohol dependence

“…To the best of our knowledge, there are no reports on the use of individualised measures in the field of substance use disorder treatment, nor do we know how this population perceives such measures. Third, the literature has suggested that the majority of measures and patient-focused materials in substance use disorder treatment tend to require literacy skills above the average level of literacy among this population [ 26 , 27 ]. However, those who are most likely to have low reading / writing skills (e.g.…”

Readability of Commonly Used Quality of Life Outcome Measures for Youth Self-Report

“…The decision to remove question numbers was made because the CLI, in particular, proved highly sensitive to the inclusion of question numbering, and scores were more consistent with other formulas when numbering was removed. We only included response options if they were provided as full sentences, instead of numerical or Likert-type response categories consisting only of a few words [ 37 ]. However, where some response sets within the same questionnaire consisted of full sentences while other response sets did not, we still included the latter to maintain a consistent approach within the same questionnaire.…”

A text comprehension approach to questionnaire readability: An example using gambling disorder measures.

“…Whether researchers have used the Flesch readability formulas or more recently developed text-analysis approaches, conclusions across investigations have been consistent—the readability of self-report questionnaires of depression (McHugh & Behar, 2009), anxiety (McHugh et al, 2011), alcohol misuse (McHugh et al, 2014), and binge-eating disorder (Richards et al, 2013) vary widely, and some questionnaires are less appropriate for assessing individuals of limited literacy. Given that gambling disorder disproportionally affects individuals from populations who are at risk for limited reading abilities, researchers and clinicians would benefit from understanding how advanced text-analysis tools can inform the development and selection of self-report questionnaires of gambling disorder symptoms.…”

“…Traditional efforts to operationalize readability used simple text characteristics such as sentence and word length as part of readability "formulas" that could be manually computed by the average reader (Flesch, 1948). Although these approaches continue to be used widely (e.g., McHugh et al, 2014), their application to the analysis of questionnaire readability has been criticized in light of the availability of modern text-analysis approaches (Lenzner, 2014). The purpose of this article was to demonstrate how modern readability approaches can be used to develop and select self-report questionnaires of psychological disorder symptoms.…”