Figure 1.
The informatic processing of information and consent documents.
It includes three steps: the first is applicable to all European languages. The second step is specific to the language considered. The last step is the calculation of the Flesch index with the variables obtained from the previous steps.
Table 1.
ICF length (in number of words), Flesch scores and statistically significant differences between types and contexts of studies.
Figure 2.
Flesch index for each category of reference texts, compared to those of information and consent forms.
Central bars correspond to the medians, the ends of the boxes to the 25th and 75th percentiles and ends of the bars to the maximum and minimum values. ICF: Information and Consent Form. N.S: Not Significant. ICFs (N = 275) have significantly (p<0.05) lower readability scores than literary extracts (N = 9), political speeches (N = 5) and articles from the press (N = 51), but similar scores to everyday contracts (N = 6).