The Readability Study: A randomised trial to examine the effect of health information written at different grade reading levels.

Participants will be randomised to read two pieces of health information about sciatica and knee osteoarthritis written at one of four grade reading levels: 8, 10, 12 and 14. The texts are approximately 350 words each. We expect the entire questionnaire to take 15 minutes, with 2 minutes to be spent on each text. To reduce the chance of participants skipping through the questions without reading the intervention text, participants will not be able to move onto the next questions until 1 minute has passed (to be confirmed through piloting). The original text was sourced from UpToDate Patient Education Materials (Beyond the Basics). The text was adapted slightly to meet a grade reading level of 14, and to ensure it clearly covered all items in the knowledge measure. The text was then simplified and revised down iteratively to grade 12, 10 and 8.