First Report
National Health Literacy Survey
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ON September 6,
2006, the National Center for Educational Statistics of the U.S. Department
of Education released The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results
from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL).
The results are based on assessment tasks designed specifically to
measure the health literacy of adults living in the United States. Health
literacy was reported using four performance levels used in the NAAL
study: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, and Proficient.
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The majority of adults (53 percent) had Intermediate health literacy.
About 22 percent had Basic and 14 percent had Below Basic health literacy.
The report looked at health insurance coverage and where adults get
information about health issues.
For example, adults with Below Basic or Basic health literacy were
less likely than adults with higher health literacy to get information
about health issues from written sources (newspapers, magazines, books,
brochures, or the Internet) and more likely than adults with higher
health literacy to get a lot of information about health issues from
radio and television.
For the full
report, see: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006483
Low literacy and the costs of health care
Since 1974, when health officials became aware of the
effects of low literacy on health, literacy problems have grown.
A more complex health-care system requires better reading skills to
negotiate the system and take more responsibility for self-care.
Using a nationally representative sample of the U.S. adult population age
16 and older, the National Academy on an Aging Society in 2002 examined the
impact of literacy on the use of health care services. The study found
that people with low health-literacy skills use more health care services.
Among adults who stayed overnight in a hospital in 1994, those with low
health literacy skills averaged 6 percent more hospital visits, and
stayed in the hospital nearly 2 days longer than adults with higher
health literacy skills.
The classic work on using plain language in health and medical
materials. Highly recommended.
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The added health-care costs of low literacy
are estimated at $73 billion in 1998 dollars. This includes $30 billion
for the Level 2 population plus $43 billion for the Level 1 population.
The total is about what Medicare pays for doctor services, dental services,
home health care, prescription drugs, and nursing-home care combined.
Writing health-care information
It is well known that old age, illness, and other forms of stress
all impair reading skill, memory, and powers of concentration.
For these reasons, medical experts recommend writing health information
at the 5th-grade level. This includes consent forms, prescription
labels, and other health and medical instructions.
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Reading in the Workplace
Pathways to Employee Success
There is a strong relationship between reading skill and job performance. |
LOW levels
of literacy cause costly and dangerous mistakes in the workplace.
There are other costs—in billions of dollars— resulting
from low productivity, poor quality of products and services,
mistakes, absenteeism, and lost management time.
The1992 National Assessment of Adult Literacy and the 1994-98
international survey included a number of questions about the
respondents' work at the time of the survey and in the prior year,
their weekly wages and annual earnings, and their recent educational
and training activities.
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The Educational Testing Service published a policy report based
on those findings, Pathways to Labor Market Success: The Literacy
Proficiencies of U.S. Adults.
Like the U.S. military studies of literacy, this report showed the
relationship between reading skills and job performance. The report
showed that the proficiency gaps between U.S. workers at the top of
the skills distribution and those at the bottom were consistently larger
than the gaps found in other high-income countries. In fact, inequality
in the distribution of literacy skills among the employed in the United
States was among the largest of all the high-income countries examined.
The employment percentages of U.S. adults of different literacy levels.
Source: IALS 1994.
Those with the highest levels of literacy skills had the highest and
best paid positions. Those with the lowest levels of literacy skills
had the lowest positions and income. The mean annual earnings of the
employed with a Level-5 proficiency were typically three times as high
as those of workers who scored in Level 1. Workers whose job duties
involved more reading, writing, and math-related tasks were considerably
more likely to have received education or training from their employers.
Perhaps the most striking finding is that a large majority of workers
in the United States, even in Levels 1 and 2, believe that their existing
reading, writing, and arithmetic skills on their current jobs are good
or excellent. Relatively few workers believe that their existing proficiencies
will limit their future job opportunities.
For the full report, see: Pathways
to Labor-Market Success:
http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICADULTLIT.pdf
Download It Now—Free!
The Principles of Readability
By William H. DuBay
http://www.impact-information.com/impactinfo/readability02.pdf
A brief introduction to the research on the readability formulas.
70 pages, bibliography
"Thanks for the
report on readability. It is really a very impressive work. You
have pulled together a lot of information that ranges over a long
period of time. A genuine work of classic scholarship—of which
there is way too little that comes my way."
—Thomas Sticht, Ph.D., International Consultant on Adult Literacy
"I finally got
around to reading your article. It is very good, scholarly, and
complete. Even though readability formulas have been around for
years, I think that the biggest current problem is that they are
not widely used. Much education of writers, editors, and general
population is needed."
—Edward Fry, Ph.D. Reading Consultant.
"I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the level of scholarship
in your amazing work, The Principles of Readability.
—Eldon McMurray, Ph.D. Candidate, Utah Valley State College.
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Plain Language in the News
Ontario
Securities Commission to cut through financial jargon:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/
Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161726632203&call_pageid=968350072197&col=
969048863851
Simple
language improves health-care outcomes:
http://www.mcg.edu/news/2006NewsRel/health_literacy103106.html
Small
businesses to benefit from regulatory Web site:
http://nashville.bizjournals.com/extraedge/washingtonbureau/archive/2006/10/23/
bureau1.html?market=nashville
Would-be
entrepeneurs need plain English:
http://www.freelanceuk.com/news/1930.shtml
Bosses
using jargon to impress:
http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2006/11/06/38010/Jargon+
is+big+turn-off+for+employees.html
Report
"incomprehensible to any normal person:"
http://www.teesdalemercury.co.uk/teesdale-news/story,1182.html
Teaching
workplace basics:
http://www.personneltoday.com/Articles/2006/11/28/38291/back-to-basics.html
Doublespeak
causes word insecurity:
http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2006/11/28/news/editorials/1019472.txt
Undergraduates
lacking technological literacy:
http://campustechnology.com/news_article.asp?id=19679&typeid=150
Hungry
people can't eat D.C. jargon:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/294796_food06.html?source=rss
Business
and business schools fight bad writing:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8LQRQ000.htm
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