We know that language can be a barrier to implementing research evidence into practice. Whilst the majority of the world’s population speak languages other than English, English has become the dominant language of publication for research in healthcare. PEDro content is now available in 13 languages, thanks to the translation efforts from volunteers from around the world.
A survey of usage of the PEDro was recently published in the Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy. The aim of the study was to quantify the usage of the PEDro web-site and training videos by language, including the use of online translation, and to calculate relative usage of the different sections of the web-site.
Google Analytics was used to track usage (or pageviews) of the PEDro web-site for July 2017 to June 2018. The number of views of each of the PEDro training videos was downloaded from YouTube for January 2015 to August 2018. The pageviews and video views were categorised by language and, for pageviews, web-site section. 2,828,422 pageviews were included in the analyses. The English-language sections had the largest number of pageviews (59%), followed by Portuguese (16%), Spanish (12%), German (4%), and French (4%). Users applied online translation tools to translate selected content of the PEDro web-site into 41 languages. The PEDro training videos had been viewed 78,150 times. The three most commonly viewed languages were English (59%), Portuguese (20%), and Spanish (6%).
There was substantial use of some of the translated versions of the resources offered by PEDro. Future efforts could focus on region-specific promotion of the language resources that were underutilised in PEDro. The developers of PEDro and PEDro users can work collaboratively to facilitate uptake and translate resources into languages other than English, to reduce the language barrier in using research to guide practice.
