AHRQ-funded researchers have developed free tools to measure an aspect of health literacy—individuals' reading comprehension in a medical context. These tools have largely been used for research. Only the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine–Short Form was developed to identify patients with limited literacy in clinical settings.

This site contains information about measures, including their psychometric properties, based on a review of the peer-reviewed literature. The Tool Shed is maintained by Tufts Medicine Center for Health Literacy Research & Practice at Tufts Medical Center.

A bilingual (English and Spanish) screening tool that identifies patients at risk for low health literacy. The tool can be administered in a clinical setting in three minutes. Test results provide information about the patient that allow providers to appropriately adapt their communication practices in an effort to achieve better health outcomes.

The REALM-SF is a 7-item word recognition test to provide clinicians with a valid quick assessment of patient health literacy. The REALM-SF has been validated and field tested in diverse research setting, and has excellent agreement with the 66-item REALM instrument in terms of grade-level assignments.

A research-based tool to help you develop and assess public communication materials.

An Instrument To Assess the Understandability and Actionability of Print and Audiovisual Patient Education Materials

Readability is calculated using the Gulpease Index. This index has been implemented for Italian, English and French. For German and Spanish, only the readability index works.

Formula based on sentences and syllables in a piece of text to assess readability.

Cecelia and Leonard Doak* developed the SAM to assess patient education materials. n addition to rating how easy the materials are to understand and use, the SAM measures how suitable they are for the intended audience.