Listenability as a Tool for Advancing Health Literacy

Abstract

Health literacy research and practice has focused mainly on the readability of written documents. Yet oral communication plays at least as important a role in the interpersonal ecology in which people make real decisions about their health. Moreover, the single-minded quest for short sentences and simple vocabulary inherent in the readability paradigm can subvert the effort to engage in patient- or consumer-centered communication. Listenability is the quality of discourse that eases the cognitive burden that aural processing imposes. Listenability is a function of oral-based language plus “considerate” rhetorical structures. The Listenability Style Guide presented in this article offers evidence-based recommendations for producing listenable discourse. A study testing the applicability of the Listenability Style Guide to postsurgical discharge instructions was conducted. College students either heard or read discharge instructions composed in either high or moderate listenability. Comprehension was higher for this population in reading than in listening. Across modalities, the high listenability version was easiest to comprehend. Incorporating listenability concerns in research and practice is consistent with emerging, broad conceptions of health literacy and with the dictates of the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy.