[Can patients read what we want them to read? Analysis of the readability of printed materials for health education].

OBJECTIVE To analyze readability and legibility of a systematic sample of health education materials made available at a health center, and to propose recommendations for improvement. DESIGN Observational, descriptive study. SETTING An urban health center in Madrid, Spain. MATERIAL A sample of text from 326 health education documents. MAIN MEASURES The 326 texts were classified according to target reader, organism responsible for publication, topic, and date of publication. A sample of 500 words from each document was analyzed with Microsoft Word 2000 to determine the Flesch readability score and sentence complexity index, and to calculate the INLEG index. Print size and accompanying graphics were also analyzed. RESULTS Readability of the materials was generally acceptable, with a mean Flesch score of 13.56. However, the type tended to be too small (mean 11.37 points). In 32% of the documents there were no illustrations, and no date of publication was given in 46%. CONCLUSIONS. The readability and legibility in the group of documents we analyzed could both be improved by following the recommendations offered here. Further research is needed on the techniques used to analyze readability and legibility, especially with regard to the latter.