Leveraging Technology to Reduce Literacy Barriers on Social Health Screening Tools: Implications for Human Service Professionals and Administrators

Abstract

Human service professionals help people develop skills to become self-sufficient and optimally function. To do so, social health screening tools help in understanding clients’ needs; however, discrepancies can lead to gaps in service. One reason for incomplete screening data is low literacy, which is a barrier to understanding screening items on a self-report questionnaire. Leveraging technology to include pictorial representations and voice-to-text features minimizes barriers. The results from this pilot study of 86 people found technology enhanced features and pictorial representations aided in understanding the social health screening tool questions. Implications for how human service organizations can improve social health screening tools conclude.

Keywords:

• Accessibility
• human services
• pictorial
• social health
• technology
• UDL

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Peter Temple for his contribution to the development of the TLS-P pictorial representations.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors have no declarations of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kaprea F. Johnson

Dr. Kaprea F. Johnson is an experienced counselor educator with over eight years of experience in higher education. For seven years, she was a counselor educator at another university where she served in several leadership positions and taught a variety of masters and doctoral level courses. She has a strong diverse background in school counselor and integrated behavioral health education. Her research has garnered over 25 peer reviewed publications and over $4.4 million in grants, where she has served as the principal investigator and co-principal investigator. Her research interests are health disaparities among vulnerable and minority populations, antiracist pedagogy and practice, urban school counseling, social justice and multicultural issues, school-mental health collaboration, interprofessional education, interprofessional collaboration and integrated behavioral healthcare.

Dana L. Brookover

Dana L. Brookover is a doctoral candidate in Counselor Education and Supervision at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a former professional school counselor, and her research interests are social determinants of health, equitable college and career readiness, and lifespan development.