Readability and quality of wikipedia pages on neurosurgical topics

Modiri, Omeed; Guha, Daipayan; Alotaibi, Naif M.; Ibrahim, George M.; Lipsman, Nir; Fallah, Aria

doi:10.1016/j.clineuro.2018.01.021

Cited by 46 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…More appropriate comparisons are drawn between other open, free tertiary resources [26]. Alternatively, a validated instrument, such as DISCERN, can be used to quantitatively assess Wikipedia articles [33,34,43,92]. Other measures of quality take into consideration the number and quality of references and since there are close to one million references supporting Wikipedia's medical content, this could be a useful approach for the assessment of reliability.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Skancke and Svendsen explore the impact and potential implications associated with pharmaceutical representatives editing Wikipedia [22]. Another study investigates the impact of the contributor's experience on the quality of Wikipedia articles through an evaluation of edits [ [32], surgery [33,34], toxicology [35,36], nutrition [37][38][39], complementary and alternative medicine [40], cancer [20,21,41,42], hearing loss [43], and mental health or the brain [44,45].…”

Section: Quality Of Wikipedia's Health Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The readability of the easiest articles has been reported to be around ninth grade [25, 30,40]. Some studies find that Wikipedia's medical content requires at least a college reading level or is considered highly difficult [34,43]. Other studies simply report Wikipedia's readability as higher than that of other health information sources such as WebMD, MedlinePlus, or MayoClinic [44,64].…”

Section: Quality Of Wikipedia's Health Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review

Smith

2020

PLoS ONE

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BackgroundWikipedia's health content is the most frequently visited resource for health information on the internet. While the literature provides strong evidence for its high usage, a comprehensive literature review of Wikipedia's role within the health context has not yet been reported. ObjectiveTo conduct a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed, published literature to learn what the existing body of literature says about Wikipedia as a health information resource and what publication trends exist, if any.Results 89 articles and conference proceedings were selected for inclusion in the review. Four categories of literature emerged: 1) studies that situate Wikipedia as a health information resource; 2) investigations into the quality of Wikipedia, 3) explorations of the utility of Wikipedia in education, and 4) studies that demonstrate the utility of Wikipedia in research. ConclusionThe literature positions Wikipedia as a prominent health information resource in various contexts for the public, patients, students, and practitioners seeking health information online. Wikipedia's health content is accessed frequently, and its pages regularly rank highly in Google search results. While Wikipedia itself is well into its second decade, the academic discourse around Wikipedia within the context of health is still young and the academic PLOS ONE | https://doi.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quality Of Wikipedia's Health Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quality Of Wikipedia's Health Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review

Smith

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Modridi et al found that the mean Flesch Kincaid reading ease (FRE) score of neurosurgical articles on Wikipedia was 31.10, a score considered "difficult" and corresponding to a university-level of education. [13] Wikipedia pages on Parkinson's disease were also found to have a low readability level (FRE 30.21). [11] Wikipedia's Manual of Style for medicine-related articles was updated to strengthen the recommendations around using easier to understand language in 2015.…”

Section: Summary Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Readability of English Wikipedia's health information over time

Brezar¹,

Heilman²

2019

Wiki J Med

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Objective: To assess and compare the readability of the twenty-five most accessed English medical articles on Wikipedia 0, 1, 5 and 10 years ago. Design: The twenty-five most accessed Wikipedia articles on diseases in August 2018 were identified for this study. The content of the lead paragraphs was formatted to remove any hyperlinks, decimals, colons, semicolons and periods used in abbreviations. An online tool was then used to assign a score to the readability of each text sample using the following formulae: Gunning FOG (Frequency of Gobbledygook) index, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (F-K), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) and Flesch Reading Ease (FRE). A single reading grade (RG) was calculated for each passage by averaging scores from the FOG, SMOG and F-K tests to facilitate interpretation. These steps were repeated for the lead paragraph of the same medical articles as visible 1, 5 and 10 years ago on Wikipedia. Main Outcome Measures: Readability grade (RG) and reading ease (FRE score) Results: The average (mean) RG of the twenty-five most accessed Wikipedia articles on diseases in 2018 was 12.73 (95% CI = 12.07-13.38), and the average FRE score was 39.91 (95% CI = 36.09-43.74), a score considered "difficult". The number of articles that were easier to read (lower RG and higher FRE) in 2018 was significantly higher when compared to 2013 and 2008 (p<0.0001), but not significantly different when compared to 2017. When paired by titles and compared over time, a statistically significant difference in readability (RG and FRE) was seen in 2018 when compared to earlier years: 2017 (Friedman Chi-squared=13.70, p=0.0002), 2013 (Friedman Chi-squared=46.08, p<0.0001) and 2008 (Friedman Chi-squared=33.03, p=0.0001). None of the pages were written at the 7th or 8th grade level as recommended by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Conclusions: The average readability of English Wikipedia's medical pages has improved in 2018 when compared to previous years. Most of the health information, however, remains written at a level above the reading ability of average adults.

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“…For this reason, analysis of Internet data may reveal poorly investigated relationships. Infodemiological studies process data from Internet forums, 15 Wikipedia, 16 social media and search engines. [17][18] Google is the most popular search engine, with a local market share from 93.8% to 98.5% in 2016-2019.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Dr. Google, I have a stomach ache’ – seasonal variations in abdominal pain: a 4-year retrospective data analysis from Google Ads keywords planner

Kamińśki

Łoniewski

Marlicz

2020

Therap Adv Gastroenterol

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Background: Internet traffic may reflect the prevalence of real-world ailments. The aim of this study was to analyse queries associated with abdominal pain and to investigate seasonal frequency and trends of searches in Poland. Methods: We analysed mean search volume from March 2015 to February 2019 of keywords associated with ‘abdominal pain’ in the Polish language generated from the Google Ads Planner. Keywords were categorised by location, feature or type of pain, concurrent symptoms, frequency and patient groups, etc. We compared differences in search volumes across seasons and years. Results: Overall, 24,673,430 queries were associated with abdominal pain in the period analysed. The number of searches associated with abdominal pain in winter increased by ~30% compared with queries searched in summer. There were significantly more searches related to abdominal pain located in the epigastric, umbilical, hypogastrium, left lumbar, left iliac and right iliac regions combined with vomiting or fever, and acute or burning sensation in cold months. We did not observe any specific patterns of pain in the right lumbar or left hypochondrium region, co-presence of flatulence, acute, cramping or persistent/chronic or strong abdominal pain. Conclusion: Internet queries associated with abdominal pain and related factors have increased in the past 4 years and present a seasonal pattern. Google Ads may be a valuable tool to assess the prevalence of complaints in under-researched regions. The observed trends in queries related to abdominal pain merely reflect the scale of the problem. The reported pattern should be verified in epidemiological studies.

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Readability and quality of wikipedia pages on neurosurgical topics

Cited by 46 publications

References 13 publications

Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review

Situating Wikipedia as a health information resource in various contexts: A scoping review

Readability of English Wikipedia's health information over time

‘Dr. Google, I have a stomach ache’ – seasonal variations in abdominal pain: a 4-year retrospective data analysis from Google Ads keywords planner

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