Who can you trust? Credibility assessment in online health forums

Lederman, Reeva; Fan, Hanmei; Smith, Stephen P.; Chang, Shanton

doi:10.1016/j.hlpt.2013.11.003

Cited by 87 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…As the number of people consulting the Internet in health-related issues is continuously rising, more and more studies attempt to assess the credibility of websites (e.g. Gao et al 2015, Lederman et al 2014). Molassiotis and Xu (2004) evaluated safety issues of web-based information about herbal medicines in the treatment of cancer.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Kováts

Hubai

Horváth

et al. 2018

Acta Botanica Hungarica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of herbs and herbal medicinal products, both in developing and developed countries. While electronic medium has become a more and more important tool for presenting information about health-related issues, several studies demonstrated that the internet often contains inaccurate and/or misleading information. In our study we assessed 30 Hungarian websites and 2 cellphone applications intended for public use and evaluated the quality and credibility of the information presented about medicinal plants recommended. It was found that websites showed very diverse safety: most websites gave mixed information, that is, some medicinal herbs and their potential hazard were properly described, while others were not. There were, however, websites, which completely missed to give information about any potential hazard. As credibility of public websites can be in most cases questioned, it is strongly recommended for potential users to consult more than one source of information.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Kováts

Hubai

Horváth

et al. 2018

Acta Botanica Hungarica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the current study, we focus on the online reviews (more specifically, positive and negative reviews) obtained from OHC platforms. Researchers have found that people using OHCs consider creditability as an important issue and wish to get reliable advice from OHCs [30,33,43]. Previous literature takes a motivational perspective with an emphasis on perceived benefits and perceived costs to discuss information sharing to online communities [9,18] and OHCs [59].…”

Section: Online Health Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Online reviews on OHCs are a new type of eWOM [34]. It is different from other types of online communities because the communication and the knowledge sharing on OHCs require specific context and knowledge about specific medical conditions to interpret other's opinions [30]. In addition, research has shown that patients and consumers have complicated needs [42,45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Do Consumers Review Doctors Online? Topic Modeling Analysis of Positive and Negative Reviews on an Online Health Community in China

Pang¹,

Liu²

2020

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Consumers often learn from others through a social learning process (e.g. electronic word of mouth) before making decisions. From the e-business perspective, online reviews have changed how people select products and services, and no doubt it is the same in the e-health sector. In this study, we examine online reviews of patients and health consumers for their doctors in an online health consultation platform in China. We combine machine learning and qualitative techniques to derive the themes of online reviews and the factors leading to positive and negative reviews. Our analysis demonstrates that service levels of hospitals, doctors' communication skills and their professional skills influence the sentiment of reviews. Our findings offer important insights into theories and practice for studying online reviews in the healthcare context.

show abstract

“…risk reduction through healthy living or recent diagnosis of a particular disease), information seeking patterns, the quality of information, credence placed on the information found, and usability and design aspects for health websites and forums [4 -11]. Some are focused on specific conditions or particular cultures [1,2]; some focus on the impacts of innovation [3]; most are of a more generic nature. Whether this is due to the increasing focus on Internet governance or on the increasing emphasis by governments to persuade citizens to take more responsibility for their own health is not clear, but there has been a considerable flourishing of publications in this field.…”

Section: Health Information Seeking On the Internetmentioning

confidence: 99%

ICANN, Health Information and the "Dot Health" Top Level Domain

Solomonides

2014

2014 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The problems of poor or biased information and of misleading health and wellbeing advice on the Internet are well known. The recent decision by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to authorize a large number of new generic top-level domains, including some with a clear connection to health or healthcare, presents an opportunity to bring some order to this chaotic situation. In the case of the most general of these domains, ".health", experts advance a compelling argument in favor of some degree of content control. On the opposing side, advocates for Internet freedom counter that this is too valuable to be compromised, and once lost it may never be recovered. The author supports a proposal to bridge the credibility gap in online health information by providing provenance information for websites in the .health domain.

show abstract

Who can you trust? Credibility assessment in online health forums

Cited by 87 publications

References 49 publications

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Why Do Consumers Review Doctors Online? Topic Modeling Analysis of Positive and Negative Reviews on an Online Health Community in China

ICANN, Health Information and the "Dot Health" Top Level Domain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Who can you trust? Credibility assessment in online health forums

Cited by 87 publications

References 49 publications

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Assessment of the credibility of public websites about medicinal herbs

Why Do Consumers Review Doctors Online? Topic Modeling Analysis of Positive and Negative Reviews on an Online Health Community in China

ICANN, Health Information and the &#x0022;Dot Health&#x0022; Top Level Domain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

ICANN, Health Information and the "Dot Health" Top Level Domain