Addressing health literacy in patient decision aids

Table 8 Review II’s Summary of Attention Paid to Health Literacy in PtDA Trials

Criteria Used to Evaluate PtDA Trials % (n)
	Literacy Level Stated^Ϯ	≤ Grade 8 Reading Age	Media other than Text^ϮϮ	Web-Based	Stratified by Literacy	Stratified by Education	Lower Literacy Over-Sampled	Literacy Addressed in Conclusion
Present	4 (4)	5 (5)	68 (67)	3 (3)	2 (2)	0 (0)	2 (2)	3 (3)
Absent	93 (91)	92 (89)	30 (29)	97 (94)	98 (95)	100 (97)	98 (95)	96 (94)
Unknown	1 (2)	3 (3)	1 (1)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)
Total	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Trials	(97)	(97)	(97)	(97)	(97)	(97)	(97)	(97)

^Ϯ Most trials did not identify the literacy level of the intended audience. We operationalized this criterion to code “present” if the research sample group’s literacy requirements were stated.
^ϮϮIf the PtDA was text based, but included graphics of frequencies and other numeric data, these were considered to be text. This criterion was meant to provide for alternative media for non-readers such as pictures, video explanations of data, voice-over narration, etc.

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