The development and validation of an instrument to measure the quality of health research reports in the lay media

Abstract

BackgroundThe media serves as an important link between medical research, as reported in scholarly sources, and the public and has the potential to act as a powerful tool to improve public health. However, concerns about the reliability of health research reports have been raised. Tools to monitor the quality of health research reporting in the media are needed to identify areas of weakness in health research reporting and to subsequently work towards the efficient use of the lay media as a public health tool through which the public’s health behaviors can be improved.MethodsWe developed the Quality Index for health-related Media Reports (QIMR) as a tool to monitor the quality of health research reports in the lay media. The tool was developed according to themes generated from interviews with health journalists and researchers. Item and domain characteristics and scale reliability were assessed. The scale was correlated with a global quality assessment score and media report word count to provide evidence towards its construct validity.ResultsThe items and domains of the QIMR demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability. Items from the ‘validity’ domain were negatively skewed, suggesting possible floor effect. These items were not eliminated due to acceptable content and face validity. QIMR total scores produced a strong correlation with raters’ global assessment and a moderate correlation with media report word count, providing evidence towards the construct validity of the instrument.ConclusionsThe results of this investigation indicate that QIMR can adequately measure the quality of health research reports, with acceptable reliability and validity.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4259-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The QUEST for quality online health information: validation of a short quantitative tool

“…A follow-up search was conducted on September 10, 2018, yielding three additional tools: the Quality Index for health-related Media Reports (QIMR) [ 11 ], the “Date, Author, References, Type, and Sponsor” (DARTS) tool [ 12 ] and Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ) [ 13 ]. The tools identified range from generic assessments, intended for use across multiple domains of online health information, to assessments targeted to a specific: 1) health condition [ 14 , 15 ]; 2) aspect of a condition such as treatment [ 12 , 16 ]; 3) audience [ 17 , 18 ]; or 4) type of media [ 11 , 13 ]. As such, a disadvantage of existing tools is that they are limited in the scope of their application.…”

Using Natural Language Processing to Examine the Uptake, Content, and Readability of Media Coverage of a Pan-Canadian Drug Safety Research Project: Cross-Sectional Observational Study

“…Although some believe that the process of journalism is relatively linear with information received from researchers and transmitted by journalists to a poorly informed public, others discuss the cocreation of media with journalists and the public, voluntary health organizations, or professionals in health services delivery, government, and private sector health care companies [3]. News media have guidelines and ethical principles for reporting [6,7], as well as resources to help them interpret the technical material (eg, Evidencenetwork.ca and HealthNewsReviews.org) and review criteria for elements to include in health reporting [5,8]. In addition, organizations such as the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have provided information on communicating the risk, benefit, and uncertainty related to drug therapy [9].…”

Automatically Appraising the Credibility of Vaccine-Related Web Pages Shared on Social Media: A Twitter Surveillance Study

“…This research extends knowledge related to the surveillance of health misinformation on social media. Where much of the prior research has aimed to label individual social media posts or the claims made on social media by veracity [25-29], we instead labeled Web pages shared on social media using a credibility appraisal checklist extended from previously validated instruments to be appropriate to vaccine-related communications [21,22]. In other related work, Mitra et al [51] examined the linguistic features in social media posts that influenced perceptions of credibility.…”

“…The DISCERN tool was designed as a general purpose tool for evaluating the quality of health information [21], with an emphasis on Web pages that patients might use to support the decisions they make about their health. The Quality Index for health-related Media Reports (QIMR) is a more recent example and differs from previous tools in that it was designed to be used to evaluate the quality of communications about new biomedical research [22]. Common elements of the tools used by experts to assess the credibility of health research reporting and patient information on the Web include the following: the veracity of the included information, transparency about sources of evidence, disclosure of advertising, simplicity and readability of the language, and use of balanced language that does not distort or sensationalize [19].…”