%0 Journal Article
%@ 2561-326X
%I JMIR Publications
%V 6
%N 3
%P e30085
%T Readability of Korean-Language COVID-19 Information from the South Korean National COVID-19 Portal Intended for the General Public: Cross-sectional Infodemiology Study
%A Moon,Hana
%A Lee,Geon Ho
%A Cho,Yoon Jeong
%+ Department of Family Medicine, Daegu Catholic University School of Medicine, 33, Duryugongwon-ro 17-gil, Nam-gu, Daegu, 42472, Republic of Korea, 82 53 650 4696, totoslee@cu.ac.kr
%K COVID-19
%K health literacy
%K readability
%K public health
%K health equity
%K consumer health information
%K information dissemination
%K health education
%K eHealth
%K online
%K social media
%K pandemic
%K infodemic
%D 2022
%7 3.3.2022
%9 Original Paper
%J JMIR Form Res
%G English
%X Background: The coronavirus pandemic has increased reliance on the internet as a tool for disseminating information; however, information is useful only when it can be understood. Prior research has shown that web-based health information is not always easy to understand. It is not yet known whether the Korean-language COVID-19 information from the internet is easy for the general public to understand. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the readability of Korean-language COVID-19 information intended for the general public from the national COVID-19 portal of South Korea. Methods: A total of 122 publicly available COVID-19 information documents written in Korean were obtained from the South Korean national COVID-19 portal. We determined the level of readability (at or below ninth grade, 10th to 12th grade, college, or professional) of each document using a readability tool for Korean-language text. We measured the reading time, character count, word count, sentence count, and paragraph count for each document. We also evaluated the characteristics of difficult-to-read documents to modify the readability from difficult to easy. Results: The median readability level was at a professional level; 90.2% (110/122) of the information was difficult to read. In all 4 topics, few documents were easy to read (overview: 5/12, 41.7%; prevention: 6/97, 6.2%; test: 0/5, 0%; treatment: 1/8, 12.5%; P=.006), with a median 11th-grade readability level for overview, a median professional readability level for prevention, and median college readability levels for test and treatment. Difficult-to-read information had the following characteristics in common: literacy style, medical jargon, and unnecessary detail. Conclusions: In all 4 topics, most of the Korean-language COVID-19 web-based information intended for the general public provided by the national COVID-19 portal of South Korea was difficult to read; the median readability levels exceeded the recommended ninth-grade level. Readability should be a key consideration in developing public health documents, which play an important role in disease prevention and health promotion. 
%M 35072633
%R 10.2196/30085
%U https://formative.jmir.org/2022/3/e30085
%U https://doi.org/10.2196/30085
%U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35072633