Relating consumer knowledge of health terms and health concepts.

In consumer health vocabulary (CHV) research, term familiarity serves as a proxy for comprehension. To date, CHV studies have not explicitly addressed the relationship between recognizing and understanding terms. We pilot-tested a survey to assess knowledge of terms among consumers (n=52) at two levels: 1) surface-level familiarity and 2) the underlying meaning or "gist." Preliminary results suggest that familiarity exceeds understanding for "common" CHV terms, but are similar for "less common" terms.