Once you have developed a printed cancer education material you should
test it. Even with information obtained directly from the audience, there
will still be some parts of the printed cancer education material that
will not be understood by or culturally sensitive to your audience. It is
necessary to pretest the materials and to review them for readability
levels to insure that the cancer prevention message reaches your audience.
Pretesting Materials
After developing a preliminary draft, the printed cancer education
material should be presented to the audience. Pretesting provides you
information on how well the audience comprehends and accepts the material.
Focus group meetings and key informant interviews are methods to help
determine the potential of the material.
Readability Tests
Several tests are available to assess readability. These include SMOG,
FOG, Fry, and many others. Computerized tests include those located on P-C
Style and Grammatic. These tests should be directly matched to the
audience. Surrogate measures like education attainment are often used for
readability testing, but the best assessment is obtained when readability
is directly tested in the audience.
Responses of the audience during pretesting should be reviewed in light of
the results of the readability test. Doing so can give clues as to why the
audience may not approve of certain parts of the printed material.
Readability can be improved by use of information oriented towards the
audience's culture; short, simple words; and concrete concepts that
maximize understanding. Avoiding use of multiple clauses, double
negatives, and contractions not acceptable to the audience can also help
to increase understanding.
Printed cancer education materials should be continually tested through
out the development process. Ongoing reviews will help facilitate the
development of culturally sensitive health materials.
