Assessment of the readability of dental health education literature

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Abstract
General dental practitioners have an important role in the dissemination of information to their patients and their advice is often reinforced with written health education material. Unfortunately, this written information is often of limited value for particular groups of patients because of its level of readability. This investigation of the problem was in two parts; firstly, a group of 140 secondary schoolchildren were asked to explain the meaning of a selection of words in common use in dental health education, and secondly, the readability of some current dental health education literature was assessed using the Fog Index. The results indicate that current dental health education literature reflects the reading ability of the designers rather than the ability of the potential target group. Many of the words in the dental profession's preventive vocabulary were not understood by the children. Over 80% were unsure of the meaning of fluoride tablets, gum disease, gingivitis and oral hygiene. The results of this investigation indicate that dentists should ensure that dental health education literature is not unduly complex and should take more time explaining the dental vocabulary in lay terminology.

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