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Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Evaluation Primer on Health Risk Communication Programs
Evaluating Communications To Special Populations
Formative research findings may reveal special communications needs
of the audiences you're trying to reach with prevention information
and education. For example, it may be important to tailor content, layout,
and use of visuals to the needs of a reader with poor reading and communication
skills. What does this mean in concrete terms? Low-literacy experts
have identified key principles for developing effective materials for
this audience. These principles are summarized in the checklist below.
You can use this list as you are developing a new publication and doublechecking
product drafts.
Checklist: Key Principles of Effective Low-Literacy Print Materials
(Gatson and Daniels 1988)
Content/Style
| ___ | The material is interactive and allows for audience involvement. |
| ___ | The material presents "how-to" information. |
| ___ | Peer language is used whenever appropriate to increase personal
identification and improve readability. |
| ___ | Words are familiar to the reader. Any new words are defined clearly. |
| ___ | Sentences are simple, specific, direct, and written in the active
voice. |
| ___ | Each idea is clear and logically sequenced (according to audience
logic). |
| ___ | The number of concepts is limited per piece. |
| ___ | The material uses concrete examples rather than abstract concepts. |
| ___ | The text highlights and summarizes important points. |
Layout
| ___ | The material uses advance organizers and headers. |
| ___ | Headers use simple and close to text. |
| ___ | Layout balances white space with words and illustrations. |
| ___ | Text uses upper and lower case letters. |
| ___ | Underlining or bolding rather than caps give emphasis. |
| ___ | Type style and size of print are easy-to-read; type is at least
12 point. |
Visuals
| ___ | Visuals are relevant to text, meaningful to the audience, and
appropriately located. |
| ___ | Illustrations and photographs are simple and free from clutter and
distraction. |
| ___ | Visuals use adult rather than childlike images. |
| ___ | Illustrations show familiar images that reflect cultural context. |
| ___ | Visuals have captions. Each visual illustrates and is directly related
to one message. |
| ___ | Different illustration styles, such as photographs, shaded line
drawings, and simple line drawings, are pretested with the audience
to determine which is understood best. |
| ___ | Cues, such as circles or arrows, point out key information. |
| ___ | Colors used are appealing to the audience (as determined by pretesting). |
Readability
| ___ | Readability analysis is done to determine reading level. |
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