Thesis
Hospitales rurales y generales de Iowa: búsqueda de servicios de idiomas y mecanismos de traducción en los sitios web hospitalarios para personas que hablan y leen español con fluidez
University of Iowa
Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Iowa
Spring 2025
Abstract
Hospital websites are an important tool for people with limited English proficiency to find the language services offered by hospitals (Graves et al., 2020). It is important to note that 2.1% of Iowa’s population, that is, 64,797 people, have limited English proficiency but are fluent in Spanish (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). The main objective of this study was to determine the level of difficulty and ease faced by a person who speaks and reads Spanish fluently, but not English, in finding language services on the websites of rural and general hospitals in Iowa. To this end, a simulation was conducted of how this person would carry out the search on the website, prioritizing the use of Spanish. The level of difficulty and ease was evaluated through a multifactorial analysis that considered, primarily, the language used (Spanish or English) and, secondarily, the keywords, their location on the page (header or footer), and the number of clicks. After obtaining the results and conducting this multifactorial analysis, presented in the results and discussion sections respectively, it was found that, of the 122 rural and general hospitals in Iowa analyzed, 93.4% offered language services and, of this 93.4%, only 16.7% of the services could be easily found by a person who speaks and reads Spanish fluently but not English, using only Spanish, while in 83.3% of the cases it was necessary to use English to locate the services, which was considered difficult for these individuals. As a secondary objective, to assist in finding language services, the study sought to determine whether the hospital’s website had a translation mechanism to translate the website into Spanish. It was found that only 6.6% of the hospitals had a website that translated into Spanish.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Hospitales rurales y generales de Iowa: búsqueda de servicios de idiomas y mecanismos de traducción en los sitios web hospitalarios para personas que hablan y leen español con fluidez
- Creators
- Pereira da Silva Marchini Daniel Mathias - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Rachel Klevar (Mentor) - University of IowaBecky Gonzalez (Advisor) - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Project Type
- Honors Thesis
- Degree Awarded
- Bachelor of Arts (BA), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Spanish
- Date degree season
- Spring 2025
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- 37 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2025 Daniel Mathias Pereira da Silva Marchini
- Language
- Spanish
- Academic Unit
- CLAS Honors Theses
- Record Identifier
- 9984826361502771
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