Readabilty and suitability assessment of online hearing-related information in traditional Chinese in Taiwan.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess readability and suitability of online hearing- related web pages written in traditional Chinese (TC) in Taiwan. Methods: Five keywords identified by a previous researcher (Hsu & Kelly-Campbell, 2020) were keyed into the Google Taiwan search engine one by one. The first ten uniform resource locators (URLs) obtained from the search were recorded, and webpages meeting exclusion criteria were excluded. After applying the exclusion criteria, 37 webpages were analysed by using Chinese Readability Index Explorer 3.0 (CRIE 3.0) to assess readability grade level (RGL), and by Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM)-TC to assess suitability. Results: The mean RGL calculated by using CRIE 3.0 was 5.3, which is not significantly different from the recommended RGL level 6. No significant difference was found between the calculated RGLs of webpages from different origins. The SAM of 37 pages showed that four webpages were unsuitable, with scores of 23.81%, 33.33%, 37.50% and 35.29%. The rest 33 of the webpages included 19 adequate and 14 superior webpages. No significant correlation was found between RGL and SAM scores. In addition, there was no significant difference in SAM rating between webpages of different origins. Conclusion: The mean RGL calculated by CRIE 3.0 was within the recommended value (6) which means that online hearing health-related information available in TC is easy to read. Also, no correlation was found between RGL and SAM, which indicates that if a webpage has a low RGL, it does not mean that it will be suitable to assess the online information. Origins of websites did not impact the readability and suitability of the online information available in TC