Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Department of Medicine, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria.
Gerontologist. 2018 Jul 13;58(4):686-695. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnw254.
Older adults' self-care often depends on understanding and utilizing health information. Inadequate health literacy among older adults poses a barrier to self-care because it hampers comprehension of this information, particularly when the information is not well-designed. Our goal was to improve comprehension of online health information among older adults with hypertension who varied in health literacy abilities.
We identified passages about hypertension self-care from credible websites (typical passages). We used a multi-faceted approach to redesign these passages, revising their content, language, organization and format (revised passages). Older participants read both versions of the passages at their own pace. After each passage, they summarized the passage and then answered questions about the passage.
Participants better remembered the revised than the typical passages, summarizing the passages more accurately and uptaking information more efficiently (less reading time needed per unit of information remembered). The benefits for reading efficiency were greater for older adults with more health knowledge, suggesting knowledge facilitated comprehension of information in the revised passages.
A systematic, multi-faceted approach to designing health documents can promote online learning among older adults with diverse health literacy abilities.
老年人的自我护理通常依赖于对健康信息的理解和使用。老年人健康素养不足会成为自我护理的障碍，因为这会妨碍他们对这些信息的理解，尤其是当信息设计不佳时。我们的目标是提高不同健康素养能力的高血压老年患者对在线健康信息的理解。
我们从可靠的网站上确定了有关高血压自我护理的段落（典型段落）。我们使用多方面的方法来重新设计这些段落，修改其内容、语言、组织和格式（修订后的段落）。年长的参与者可以按照自己的节奏阅读这两个版本的段落。阅读完每个段落后，他们总结了段落的内容，然后回答了有关段落的问题。
与典型段落相比，参与者对修订后的段落记忆更好，更准确地总结段落内容，并且更有效地获取信息（记住的信息单位所需的阅读时间更少）。对于健康知识更多的老年人来说，阅读效率的提高更为显著，这表明知识有助于理解修订后的段落中的信息。
系统的、多方面的健康文档设计方法可以促进不同健康素养能力的老年患者在线学习。
