Designing multimedia patient education materials for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: A protocol for a feasibility randomized controlled trial of patient education videos

For the two video groups, an email will be sent by the supervising author, a registered Phys- iotherapist and researcher for fifteen years, with a link to the correct video but this author will be masked to which intervention the link pertains to. The primary author will record and ana- lyze all outcomes that will be taken via the SurveyMonkey online platform but will remain masked to the treatment delivered when viewing these outcomes. Interventions In the usual care group, participants will continue along their existing healthcare pathway and will not receive any educational intervention beyond the usual education from their healthcare providers, which will not be determined by participation in the study and will not be funded by it. In the video groups, participants will continue along their usual healthcare pathway as well, however they will also be sent a link to six multimedia videos, each three to four minutes long, using the information and format of a typical online resource, in this case the Frequently Asked Questions section of Scoliosis Research Society website [44] with some additional con- tent from the qualitative literature on information needs in the scoliosis population [11,36,37,53]. The outline of the content is shown in Table 2. Adjustments were also made to ensure spelling and grammar in Irish-version English language and some terms were altered to reflect Irish phrases i.e. consultant instead of specialist. The script was edited again following feedback from the individuals who formed the public and patient involvement described

above, and this assisted in making minor corrections and updating statistics such as higher prevalence in girls vs boys [54–57], as well as elaborating on discussion points about lifestyle factors and back pain. The video channel will be set up as a private channel unique to each par- ticipant, so that the engagement statistics can be tracked for each participant. This will consist of six videos, sent once weekly from Week 1 to Week 6. Participants can skip forward, back and re-watch a released video an unlimited number of times until Week 8. Similarities between the two video intervention groups. The videos will contain identi- cal information and it will be presented in the same sequence in both types of videos. The script will be identical except for specific components that are described below. Differences between the two video intervention groups. For the video group with aug- mented (AUGM), the text, graphics, and audio formatted in accordance with recommenda- tions from the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and other advice from the literature [13,28–30,42]. Materials The multimedia materials for the TRAD and AUGM video groups will be recorded using an iPhone13 to allow for content to be formatted to a phone screen format in case users view it on mobile devices and edited on Final Cut Pro X [58] with additional audio editing on Garage Band [59]. The final video will upload to a private YouTube channel setup by the primary author and the corresponding link will be sent via email. All participants will require internet

access and a device to view and/or hear the educational materials. Participants in the two video intervention groups will be sent a link to a private YouTube channel, unique to each partici- pant so that individual YouTube analytics can recorded and analyzed. Additional patient- reported outcomes will be collected via SurveyMonkey. Following completion of the study, the videos will be made available on a YouTube link for all participants. They will also be made public via an open link in the final manuscript of this study, to assist with any future replication and appraisal. PLOS ONE Multimedia education materials for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297394 May 23, 2024 5 / 14