Title: "Making It Known: Creating and Sharing Plain Language Summaries in CSD"

Speakers: Charlotte Hilker, M.A., CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist at Mercy Medical Center and a research associate in the Psycholinguistics Lab at the University of Iowa. Lindsey Nichol, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist and a research associate in the Psycholinguistics Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Iowa.

An estimated 85% of medical research fails to reach those it seeks to help (Chalmers & Glasziou, 2009). Traditional research often uses jargon and complex esoteric language that is meaningful to other researchers, but not the public – specifically, individuals with a condition or disorder, their families, advocates, educators, health care providers, and policy makers (Oxman & Paulsen, 2019). Scientific journals also present a financial barrier to individuals outside of an academic setting to access research (Harold, 2019). These barriers affect many populations, including individuals with developmental language disorder or other disorders of language (e.g., dyslexia). Our presentation will discuss the purpose and necessity of plain language summaries, describe how researchers can train undergraduate students to create these summaries for published research articles, and explore resources and strategies for reaching the end user across different research contexts.

Attendees are encouraged to join in person in HSAB 2004. Seating is limited (first-come, first-served, ~50 seats), but the seminar will also be available via Zoom.