Multimodal mediation : a linguistic examination of health literacy in patient education

Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only.A case study was conducted to examine the discourse of two groups of participants learning about bariatric surgery: those who used a computer software patient education program and those who used more traditional patient-education materials. Participants were interviewed, given a multiple-choice questionnaire, and given a modified Cloze test over the content. The analysis of the interview discourse showed that participants who used the software application were able to recall and produce answers with more details, examples, and specific information than those who used other materials to learn about their surgery. The implications of these findings could indicate that the multimodal nature of the patient education software program may have been able to help mediate the complex medical information.Department of EnglishThesis (Ph. D.