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A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool

BACKGROUND: Oral health literacy is important to oral health outcomes. Very little has been established on comparing word recognition to comprehension in oral health literacy especially in older adults. Our goal was to compare methods to measure oral health literacy in older adults by using the Rapi...

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Autores principales: Khan, Khadija, Ruby, Brendan, Goldblatt, Ruth S, Schensul, Jean J, Reisine, Susan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25406963
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6831-14-135
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author Khan, Khadija
Ruby, Brendan
Goldblatt, Ruth S
Schensul, Jean J
Reisine, Susan
author_facet Khan, Khadija
Ruby, Brendan
Goldblatt, Ruth S
Schensul, Jean J
Reisine, Susan
author_sort Khan, Khadija
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Oral health literacy is important to oral health outcomes. Very little has been established on comparing word recognition to comprehension in oral health literacy especially in older adults. Our goal was to compare methods to measure oral health literacy in older adults by using the Rapid Estimate of Literacy in Dentistry (REALD-30) tool including word recognition and comprehension and by assessing comprehension of a brochure about dry mouth. METHODS: 75 males and 75 females were recruited from the University of Connecticut Dental practice. Participants were English speakers and at least 50 years of age. They were asked to read the REALD-30 words out loud (word recognition) and then define them (comprehension). Each correctly-pronounced and defined word was scored 1 for total REALD-30 word recognition and REALD-30 comprehension scores of 0–30. Participants then read the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research brochure “Dry Mouth” and answered three questions defining dry mouth, causes and treatment. Participants also completed a survey on dental behavior. RESULTS: Participants scored higher on REALD-30 word recognition with a mean of 22.98 (SD = 5.1) compared to REALD-30 comprehension with a mean of 16.1 (SD = 4.3). The mean score on the brochure comprehension was 5.1 of a possible total of 7 (SD = 1.6). Pearson correlations demonstrated significant associations among the three measures. Multivariate regression showed that females and those with higher education had significantly higher scores on REALD-30 word-recognition, and dry mouth brochure questions. Being white was significantly related to higher REALD-30 recognition and comprehension scores but not to the scores on the brochure. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of using the REALD-30 and a brochure to assess literacy in a University setting among older adults. Participants had higher scores on the word recognition than on comprehension agreeing with other studies that recognition does not imply understanding.
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spelling pubmed-42424872014-11-25 A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool Khan, Khadija Ruby, Brendan Goldblatt, Ruth S Schensul, Jean J Reisine, Susan BMC Oral Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Oral health literacy is important to oral health outcomes. Very little has been established on comparing word recognition to comprehension in oral health literacy especially in older adults. Our goal was to compare methods to measure oral health literacy in older adults by using the Rapid Estimate of Literacy in Dentistry (REALD-30) tool including word recognition and comprehension and by assessing comprehension of a brochure about dry mouth. METHODS: 75 males and 75 females were recruited from the University of Connecticut Dental practice. Participants were English speakers and at least 50 years of age. They were asked to read the REALD-30 words out loud (word recognition) and then define them (comprehension). Each correctly-pronounced and defined word was scored 1 for total REALD-30 word recognition and REALD-30 comprehension scores of 0–30. Participants then read the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research brochure “Dry Mouth” and answered three questions defining dry mouth, causes and treatment. Participants also completed a survey on dental behavior. RESULTS: Participants scored higher on REALD-30 word recognition with a mean of 22.98 (SD = 5.1) compared to REALD-30 comprehension with a mean of 16.1 (SD = 4.3). The mean score on the brochure comprehension was 5.1 of a possible total of 7 (SD = 1.6). Pearson correlations demonstrated significant associations among the three measures. Multivariate regression showed that females and those with higher education had significantly higher scores on REALD-30 word-recognition, and dry mouth brochure questions. Being white was significantly related to higher REALD-30 recognition and comprehension scores but not to the scores on the brochure. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of using the REALD-30 and a brochure to assess literacy in a University setting among older adults. Participants had higher scores on the word recognition than on comprehension agreeing with other studies that recognition does not imply understanding. BioMed Central 2014-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4242487/ /pubmed/25406963 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6831-14-135 Text en © Khan et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Khan, Khadija
Ruby, Brendan
Goldblatt, Ruth S
Schensul, Jean J
Reisine, Susan
A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title_full A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title_fullStr A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title_full_unstemmed A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title_short A pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
title_sort pilot study to assess oral health literacy by comparing a word recognition and comprehension tool
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25406963
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6831-14-135
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