Banca de DEFESA: Walquiria Costa dos Santos

LEGIBILITY IN THE INTEGRATED REPORT FROM THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH: impacts of the pandemic and comparison between federal public bodies

Integrated Reporting. Readability. Health Ministry. Public Agencies.

The Management Reports – MRs of entities linked to the federal public administration since 2018, in accordance with determinations of the Federal Audit Court – TCU, have the Integrated Reporting – IR approach. Such reports are tools of social control and are primarily intended for society. In this sense, considering the context of the Covid 19 pandemic and the expectation that information relating to this topic will be reflected in the reports of the Ministry of Health - MS of Brazil, this research analyzed the ease of reading the management reports of the aforementioned ministry through the Flesch Readability Index adapted to Portuguese, as well as comparing the readability of these reports with a sample of other bodies and entities that prepare the same report in accordance with TCU's instructions and normative decisions. The reports used were from the years 2018 to 2023 and included up to 24 accounting units per year, with a total of 137 reports totaling 23,652 pages. The Kruskal-Wallis non parametric statistical test did not reject the sample normality hypothesis so that the data can be comparable. The research relied on the guiding hypothesis that information from the Covid-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the readability of MS MRs. The findings revealed that there was a change in the readability of the MS MRs, however, the variations in improvement and worsening of readability over the years, both considering the MS individually and comparing by groups, do not support conclusions about the impacts of the pandemic on itself according to the analysis parameter of the directive hypothesis, except for the Public Bodies group, considering the 2021 MRs, which presented a change in classification from reasonably difficult to very difficult in terms of readability.