Are lay abstracts published in Autism readable enough for the general public? A short report.
Lay abstracts in autism journals are still above the public’s reading level—test yours with a free checker before you submit.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Yi et al. (2023) ran a computer check on every lay abstract printed in the journal Autism.
They wanted to see if the plain-language summaries were truly plain.
What they found
The lay abstracts were still too hard for most people.
They scored only a little lower than the regular science abstracts.
How this fits with other research
Wen et al. (2023) did the same check on Autism Research and got the same bad news.
Munro et al. (2023) found the same problem in clinic reports given to parents.
Normand et al. (2022) looked at the issue from the other side: parents did not mind ABA jargon in treatment plans.
Together the four papers show that writers keep missing the 6th-grade target, yet readers may not care as much as we fear.
Why it matters
If families cannot grasp our abstracts, they cannot use our findings.
Next time you write for parents, run the text through a free readability checker.
Aim for 6th grade or lower.
Then ask one non-scientist to read it aloud.
Fix any sentence that makes them pause.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research papers are sometimes hard to follow. Lay abstracts give a short account of research papers. However, it is unclear whether lay abstracts are readable to the lay people. This study examined the readability of 570 abstracts and lay abstracts published between 2020 and 2022 in the journal Autism. We found that that lay abstracts are easier to read than abstracts but are harder to read than news reports. The findings suggest that lay abstracts, on average, are hard to read for the lay people. We propose that the journal and its authors may invite reviewers from outside the research community to test whether a lay abstract is readable.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2023 · doi:10.1177/13623613231163083