YouTube as a source of patient information for stroke: A content-quality and an audience engagement analysis

Abstract

Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide following ischemic heart disease, and the fifth in the United States. The video-sharing database, YouTube, is the second most popular visited website with more than 2 billion users, thus it's increasingly being used as a medium for delivering health information. Aim: We aimed to evaluate the quality, reliability and audience engagement of stroke-related YouTube videos. Methods: In October 2019 we conducted a search on YouTube using 5 keywords: stroke, brain attack, hemorrhagic stroke, ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack. We selected the first 30 videos from each search query for further analysis. The validated DISCERN instrument was used (a score of 0-5 per question) to assess the videos by four independent raters. We then recorded qualitative data and quantitative data for each video. Results: After sorting through 150 stroke videos, a total of 101 unique YouTube videos met our inclusion criteria. We found that the mean overall quality of YouTube videos according to DISCERN is of fair quality. Most videos (65.3%) were uploaded by hospitals, mentioned the symptoms of stroke (66.3%), had a doctor speaking (60.4%) and contained diagrams (20.8%). Conclusion: YouTube is a useful source of gathering information about treatment choices for patients and their families as the quality of You-Tube videos is fair. The audience engagement suggestions in our paper may help content creators improve the appeal of YouTube videos.

Short video apps as a health information source: an investigation of affordances, user experience and users’ intention to continue the use of TikTok

“…According to a systematic review by Zhang et al (2015), the overall quality of online health information is problematic. Dozens of studies have assessed the quality of health information in YouTube videos about a broad set of diseases, such as diabetes (Leong et al , 2018), cancer (Aydin and Akyol, 2020), stroke (Szmuda et al , 2020) and systemic lupus erythematosus (Ng et al , 2020). These studies reveal that the quality of health information varies from very poor (Aydin and Akyol, 2020) to fair (Szmuda et al , 2020) to good (Ng et al , 2020), depending on the disease in question.…”

“…Dozens of studies have assessed the quality of health information in YouTube videos about a broad set of diseases, such as diabetes (Leong et al , 2018), cancer (Aydin and Akyol, 2020), stroke (Szmuda et al , 2020) and systemic lupus erythematosus (Ng et al , 2020). These studies reveal that the quality of health information varies from very poor (Aydin and Akyol, 2020) to fair (Szmuda et al , 2020) to good (Ng et al , 2020), depending on the disease in question. According to a survey of coronavirus-related videos on TikTok, 36% were about prevention and precaution, 15.4% quoted credible information from reputable sources, and only about 4.3% posted misinformation (Basch et al , 2020).…”

YouTube as a source of information on carbon monoxide poisoning: a content-quality analysis.

“…YouTube videos have insufficient quality ranging 27-42 DISCERN pts. Only 1 series of stroke videos was graded "average" (39-50 pts) [2][3][4]6,13]. The utmost of posts contained CO formation mechanisms, symptoms, definition, clear information and safety measures.…”

“…Primarily designed for entertainment, YT provides medical information on various medical topics, yet its credibility may appear controversial. As a consequence, the content and quality of information presented to the viewer was recently evaluated in various papers [2][3][4][5][6]. None of the articles did evaluate the topic of carbon monoxide (CO).…”

YouTube as a Source of Patient Information for Bipolar Disorder: A ContentQuality and Optimization Analysis

“…previously published [4,7,[19][20][21]. The average daily views (total views/ days since upload), the like ratio ((likes/likes+dislikes)*100) and the video power index (VPI) ((like*100/(like+dislike))*(views/day)/100) were used to assess the audience engagement with a video.…”