Developing Health Education Materials for Low-Literate Adults

Objectives

• Discuss profiles and prevalence of low literacy in the USA

• Describe the impact low literacy has on health care and foodservice industries

• Contract the difference between the traditional process of developing materials and the three-phase process

Objectives, cont.

• Design appropriate steps for developing the first draft

• List characteristics of good illustrations to use with low literate adults

• Use the SMOG formula or Fry Chart to determine readability level of material

Magnitude of Literacy Problem in USA

• 20% of adults cannot read or write to complete basis tasks

• 45 million can barely read• 1 of 8 employees reads on a 4th grade

level• 1 of 5 reads at the 8th grade level• Most materials are written at the 9-12th

grade level

Literacy Skills

• Reading

• Writing

• Numeracy

• Document processing

Functional Literacy

• Ability to:– Read at 4-6th grade level– Address envelop– Fill out forms

Why is literacy a challenge for employers, supervisors, and

nutrition educators

?

• Not enough qualified candidates to fill jobs because of low literacy - especially in hospitals and food service.

• Need to use materials designed for a lower literacy audience.

What does it feel like to have limited literacy skills

?

The Traditional Process for Developing Education Materials….

The Three Phase Process….

1, 2, 3

Phase 1

Planning

Define Audience

• Age

• Gender

• Ethnicity

• Marriage status

• Geographic location

• Determine grade level

Conduct Needs Assessment

• What do they want to know, not what we think they need

• Balance perspectives

• User friendly

• How to conduct assessment?– Personal interviews– Market surveys

Write Learning Objectives

• Limit to 1 to 2 objectives

• Focus writing

Confer with your peers.

Phase 2

Development

Strategic Organization

• Be consistent in format

• Put important information first or last– Summarize and repeat points often– Restate in different terms– Use repetition or a series

• Use one idea per page (or one at a time)

Strategic Organization, cont.

• Be specific, concise and accurate

• Present examples

• Sequence logically– topic– step by step– chronologically

Writing

• Be careful of cutesy phrases

• Use simple definitions of new words and repeat often

• Use active verbs, not passive

• Use positive statements

• Use words with single meanings

• Avoid contractions and acronyms

Writing, cont.

• Use simple sentences– avoid semicolons, etc.

• Paragraphs should be short and to the point

• Repeat the main point throughout the paragraph– unrepeated information lasts 1/4 second to one

hour– repeated lasts 8 hours

Illustrations

• Keep purposeful

• Place next to the text

• Remove extraneous detail

• Realistic full body

• Better to show only desired behavior

Illustrations, cont.

• Don’t use distracting illustrations

• Placing concepts together in a box is an effective visual device

• Don’t get too clever or cute

Font

• Optima or Helvetica best

• Contrast color with background

• Avoid serifs

Format

• Use short explanatory headings

• Adequate white space and wide margins

• Right justified

• Recommend 45 letter columns

• Avoid lengthy lists

• Double space between paragraphs

• Do not indent

Phase 3

Evaluation

Readability

• Fry

• SMOG