Evaluating the Dental Caries-Related Information on Brazilian Websites: Qualitative Study

Abstract

BackgroundDental caries is the most common chronic oral disease, affecting 2.4 billion people worldwide who on average have 2.11 decayed, missing, or filled teeth. It impacts the quality of life of patients, socially and economically. However, the comprehension of dental caries may be difficult for most people, as it involves a multifactorial etiology with the interplay between the tooth surface, the dental biofilm, dietary fermentable carbohydrates, and genetic and behavioral factors. Therefore, the production of effective materials addressed to the education and counseling of patients for the prevention of dental caries requires a high level of specialization. In this regard, the dental caries-related contents produced by laypersons and their availability on the Internet may be low-quality information.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess the readability and the quality of dental caries-related information on Brazilian websites.MethodsA total of 75 websites were selected through Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Baidu. The websites were organized in rankings according to their order of appearance in each one of the 4 search engines. Furthermore, 2 independent examiners evaluated the quality of websites using the DISCERN questionnaire and the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark criteria. The readability of the websites was assessed by the Flesch Reading Ease adapted to Brazilian Portuguese (FRE-BP). In addition, the information presented on the websites was categorized as etiology, prevention, and treatment of dental caries. The statistical analysis was performed using Spearman rank correlation coefficient, Mann-Whitney U test, hierarchical clustering analysis by Ward minimum variance method, Kruskal-Wallis test, and post hoc Dunn test. P<.05 was considered significant.ResultsThe Web contents were considered to be of poor quality by DISCERN (mean 33.48, standard deviation, SD 9.06) and JAMA (mean 1.12, SD 0.97) scores, presenting easy reading levels (FRE-BP: mean 62.93, SD 10.15). The rankings of the websites presented by Google (ρ=−.22, P=.08), Baidu (ρ=−.19, P=.53), Yahoo! (ρ=.22, P=.39), and Bing (ρ=−.36, P=.23) were not correlated with DISCERN scores. Moreover, the quality of websites with health- and nonhealth-related authors was similar (P=.27 for DISCERN and P=.47 for JAMA); however, the pages with a greater variety of dental caries information showed significantly higher quality scores than those with limited contents (P=.009).ConclusionsOn the basis of this sample, dental caries-related contents available on Brazilian websites were considered simple, accessible, and of poor quality, independent of their authorship. These findings indicate the need for the development of specific policies focused on the stimulus for the production and publication of Web health information, encouraging dentists to guide their patients in searching for recommended oral health websites.

Web-Based Health Information Following the Renewal of the Cervical Screening Program in Australia: Evaluation of Readability, Understandability, and Credibility

“…There was no significant correlation between reading ease and understandability, demonstrating that they measure different constructs. This is in line with previous studies and highlights the importance of using both measures to evaluate quality [ 17 ]. Most websites met some criteria to assess their credibility, and all websites demonstrated some thought had been given to the design of the websites.…”

“…There are limitations to using only readability measures to evaluate health care information [ 13 ], so it is important to ensure that web-based health information is of sufficient quality and is suitable to people from diverse backgrounds and varying levels of health literacy. Web-based health information may also require higher literacy levels than printed patient education materials, as previous studies have demonstrated that web-based patient education materials are often written above the recommended reading level of grades 6 to 8 [ 14 - 17 ], and these may be perceived as more difficult than print materials [ 13 ].…”

Quality of information about oral cancer in Brazilian Portuguese available on Google, Youtube, and Instagram

“…In the present study, only the first section of the questionnaire was used for reliability assessment. The Flesch Index of readability (Flesch Reading Ease) as adapted to Brazilian texts was also used (14). This method classifies the readability of a text on a scale from 0 (very difficult) to 100 (very easy) based on a calculation that takes into account the number of syllables per word and words per sentence.…”

Digital behavior surveillance: Monitoring dental caries and toothache interests of Google users from developing countries

“…In this scenario, the democratization of health information supported by digital technologies could increase the volume of dental caries‐related searches on the Internet. Although these behaviors can difficult the relationship between patients and professionals, by the consumption of inaccurate information (Aguirre et al, ), recently, we demonstrated that the analysis of Big Data produced from the activity of Internet users can be profitable for elucidating public attitudes of different populations in dealing with their own oral health problems (Aguirre et al, ; Lotto et al, ), through the characterization of time series in relation to search volume trends and seasonality. This investigation permits the examination of dental interests over the years, detecting if the fluctuation of data presents up‐ or downtrends or if it is systematically influenced by time periods or specific events.…”