Indicators of Accuracy of Consumer Health Information on the Internet: A Study of Indicators Relating to Information for Managing Fever in Children in the Home

Abstract

The present study is part of a project to help lay people distinguish accurate from inaccurate consumer health information on the Internet. 7,8 In a recent study, Impicciatore et al. 4 looked at the accuracy of information on the treatment of fever in children. According to them, "only a few of the [41] Web pages we reviewed gave complete and accurate information for such a common and widely discussed condition." Thus, Impicciatore et al. established that there is a problem with inaccurate consumer health information on the Internet. Design: Several popular search engines (Yahoo, AltaVista, and Google) were used to find Web pages on the treatment of fever in children. The accuracy and completeness of these Web pages was determined by comparing their content with that of an instrument developed from authoritative sources on treating fever in children. The presence on these Web pages of a number of proposed indicators of accuracy, taken from published guidelines for evaluating the quality of health information on the Internet, was noted. Main Outcome Measures:Correlation between the accuracy of Web pages on treating fever in children and the presence of proposed indicators of accuracy on these pages. Likelihood ratios for the presence (and absence) of these proposed indicators. Results:One hundred Web pages were identified and characterized as "more accurate" or "less accurate." Three indicators correlated with accuracy: displaying the HONcode logo, having an organization domain, and displaying a copyright. Many proposed indicators taken from published guidelines did not correlate with accuracy (e.g., the author being identified and the author having medical credentials) or inaccuracy (e.g., lack of currency and advertising). Conclusions:This method provides a systematic way of identifying indicators that are correlated with the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of health information on the Internet. Three such indicators have been identified in this study. Identifying such indicators and informing the providers and consumers of health information about them would be valuable for public health care.

Quality of drug information on the World Wide Web and strategies to improve pages with poor information quality. An intervention study on pages about sildenafil

“…In another study displaying a HON logo showed an association with accuracy of information on treating fever in children, i.e. with content quality [31]. A different approach would be to promote the attitude in lay persons, that information-seeking is an active process which includes a critical review of the information given.…”

Health Information Seals of Approval: What do they Signify?

“…An initial list of 24 quality indicators for Internet information was developed based on a review by Falshaw (2002), who assembled indicators reported in the published literature in library and information science and medicine as well as online Internet information evaluation guidelines (Alexander & Tate, 1996;Barry & Schamber, 1998;Beck, 2002;Block, 2001;Collins, 1996;Connell & Tipple, 1999;Everhart, 1996;Fallis & Frické, 2002;Grassian, 2000;Hawkins, 1999;Jadad & Gagliardi, 1998;Joseph, 1999;Kapoun, 1998;Lopez, 1998;Minkel, 2000;Schrock, 1999;Smith, 1997;Smith, 2001a;Tillman, 2001;Waller 2001). In order to limit the criteria to a reasonable number, similar criteria were grouped together under a single identifier.…”

“…The JAMA benchmarks demonstrate another important aspect of quality indicators for Internet information: the majority of these criteria represent proxy indicators of information quality (such as disclosure of authorship) rather than direct assessment of content. Although there are few formal evaluations of proxy indicators, those studies that have been completed suggest that these indicators bear at best a tentative relationship to information quality (Abbott, 2000;Fallis and Frické, 2002;Griffiths and Christensen, 2002;Martin-Facklam et al, 2002;Meric et al, 2002).…”

“…When the possible criteria are few and unequivocal, this presents no difficulty; but in the case of Internet health information a wide variety of indicators have been suggested as quality markers (Fallis & Frické, 2002;Jadad & Gagliardi, 1998;Kim et al, 1998;Winker et al, 2000). The 'JAMA benchmarks' (Silberg et al, 1997) are representative, and include display of authorship for medical content, source identification (attribution or references), date of last update, and disclosure of ownership, advertising policies, or conflicts of interest.…”

HelpfulMed: Intelligent searching for medical information over the internet

“…In an attempt to gather a finely tuned set of search results, the spider begins its search with a pre-defined set of 354 URLs from reputable sites as determined by a medical librarian. One should note that, however, residing on reputable sites is not necessarily an indicator of high quality of a Web page (Eysenbach et al, 2002;Fallis & Frické, 2002). Beginning with these medically related URLs, the spider then begins searching the Internet and collecting related Web pages.…”