User Experience of German Plain Language Summaries of Psychological Meta-Analyses ("KLARpsy-Texte") - A Qualitative Study Including Thinking Aloud

To communicate research findings in a lay-friendly and scientifically correct way, plain language summaries (PLSs) have been introduced. PLSs are short summaries of scientific publications using lay-friendly language and accessible formatting. While the need for PLSs is widely recognized, only rare evidence on effective criteria is available, and guidelines on how to write them differ considerably. In psychology, there is a particular lack of evidence-based guidance for writing PLSs. Project “PLan Psy” aims at developing an evidence-based guideline for writing PLSs of psychological meta-analyses. For this purpose, various empirical studies are conducted, including a qualitative study using Thinking Aloud [TA] on user experience when reading guideline-based PLSs in an online interface which is preregistered here.