Evaluating the trustworthiness of consumer-oriented health websites on diabetes

Authors

Shahabedin Rahmatizadeh, Department of Health Information Technology and Management, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Saeideh Valizadeh-Haghi, Department of Medical Library and Information Sciences, School of Allied Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IranFollow

Date of this Version

Spring 4-2018

Document Type

Article

Citation

Alam, S. S., Mohd, N., Nik, H., & Ahmad, M. (2014). Negative and positive impact of internet addiction on young adults :, 10(3), 619–638.

Anderson, J., McKemmish, S., & Manaszewicz, R. (2003). Quality criteria models used to evaluate health websites. Proceedings of the 10th Asia Pacific health and Law Librarians Conference (pp. 24–27). Citeseer.

Bedell, S. E., Agrawal, A., & Petersen, L. E. (2004). A systematic critique of diabetes on the world wide web for patients and their physicians, 73, 687–694.

Bernstam, E. V., Walji, M. F., Sagaram, S., Sagaram, D., Johnson, C. W., Meric-Bernstam, F., & Meric‐Bernstam, F. (2008). Commonly cited website quality criteria are not effective at identifying inaccurate online information about breast cancer. Cancer, 112(6), 1206–1213.

Boyer, C. (2013). When the quality of health information matters: Health on the Net is the Quality Standard for Information You can Trust. Retrieved March 19, 2018, from http://www.hon.ch/Global/pdf/TrustworthyOct2006.pdf

Charnock, D. (1998). The DISCERN Handbook: Quality criteria for consumer health information on treatment choices. 1998.

Clark, E. J. (2002). Health care web sites: Are they reliable? Journal of medical systems, 26(6), 519–528.

Coulter, A., Ellins, J., Swain, D., Clarke, A., Heron, P., Rasul, F., Magee, H., et al. (2006). Assessing the quality of information to support people in making decisions about their health and healthcare. Picker Institute Europe (p. 70). Citeseer.

Diaz, J. A., Griffith, R. A., Ng, J. J., Reinert, S. E., Friedmann, P. D., & Moulton, A. W. (2002). Patients’ Use of the Internet for Medical Information. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 17(3), 180–185.

Eysenbach, G. (2005). Design and Evaluation of Consumer Health Information Web Sites. In D. Lewis, G. Eysenbach, R. Kukafka, P. Z. Stavri, & H. Jimison (Eds.), Consumer Health Informatics (pp. 34–60). New York.

Eysenbach, G., Powell, J., Kuss, O., & Sa, E.-R. (2002). Empirical Studies Assessing the Quality of Health Information for Consumers on the World Wide Web: A Systematic Review. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 287(20), 2691–2726.

Fang-Fang, C., Chia-Hua, K., Kung-Jeng, W., & Wei-Li, W. (2011). Quality and Usability Assessment for Health Information Websites: Can Commonly Used Evaluation Criteria Be Appropriately Applied to Assess Chinese-Language Websites? (pp. 391–394). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Fast, A. M., Deibert, C. M., Hruby, G. W., & Glassberg, K. I. (2013). Evaluating the quality of Internet health resources in pediatric urology. Journal of pediatric urology, 9(2), 151–156.

Gaudinat, A., Grabar, N., & Boyer, C. (2007). Machine learning approach for automatic quality criteria detection of health web pages. Medinfo 2007: Proceedings of the 12th World Congress on Health (Medical) Informatics; Building Sustainable Health Systems.

Health Web Site Accreditation. (2018). URAC. Retrieved April 3, 2018, from https://www.urac.org/programs/health-web-site-accreditation

Hirasawa, R., Saito, K., Yachi, Y., Ibe, Y., Kodama, S., Asumi, M., Horikawa, C., et al. (2012). Quality of Internet information related to the Mediterranean diet. Public Health Nutrition, 15(5), 885–893.

Jadad, A. R., & Gagliardi, A. (1998). Rating health information on the Internet. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 279(8).

Jadad, A. R., Haynes, R. B., Hunt, D., & Browman, G. P. (2000). The Internet and evidence-based decision-making: a needed synergy for efficient knowledge management in health care. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 162(3), 362–365.

Kannampilly, J., Pavlić-Renar, I., & Metelko, Ž. (2002). The internet: empowering people with diabetes. Diabetologia Croatica, 31, 7–29.

Khazaal, Y., Chatton, A., Cochand, S., & Zullino, D. (2008). Quality of Web-based information on cocaine addiction. Patient education and counseling, 72(2), 336–341.

Khazaal, Y., Chatton, A., Zullino, D., & Khan, R. (2012). HON Label and DISCERN as Content Quality Indicators of Health-Related Websites. Psychiatric Quarterly, 83(1), 15–27.

Kim, M. I., & Ladenson, P. W. (2002). Diabetes on the Internet: Resources for Patients. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 87(8), 3523–3526.

Klein, B., White, A., Kavanagh, D., Shandley, K., Kay-Lambkin, F., Proudfoot, J., Drennan, J., et al. (2010). Content and functionality of alcohol and other drug websites: Results of an online survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 12(5), e51. JMIR Publications Inc.

López-Jornet, P., & Camacho-Alonso, F. (2010). The quality of internet information relating to oral leukoplakia. Med Oral Patol Oral Cir Bucal, 15(5), 727–731.

Luo, W., & Najdawi, M. (2004). Trust-building measures: a review of consumer health portals. Communications of the ACM, 47(1), 108–113. ACM.

Morel, V., Chatton, A., Cochand, S., Zullino, D., & Khazaal, Y. (2008). Quality of web-based information on bipolar disorder. Journal of affective disorders, 110(3), 265–269.

Obiyo, L. T., Ellimoottil, C., Adams, W., Hannick, J. H., & Gupta, G. N. (2016). The Influence of Literacy and Education on Online Health Information Seeking Behavior in Cancer Patients. ARC Journal of Urology, 1(2), 20–26.

Pérez-López, F. R. (2004). An evaluation of the contents and quality of menopause information on the World Wide Web. Maturitas, 49(4), 276–282.

Schmidt, K., & Ernst, E. (2004). Assessing websites on complementary and alternative medicine for cancer. Annals of Oncology, 15(5), 733–742.

Silberg, W. M., Lundberg, G. D., & Musacchio, R. A. (1997). Assessing, controlling, and assuring the quality of medical information on the Internet. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 277(15), 1244–1245.

Srivastava, M., Garg, R., & Mishra, P. K. (2014). Preprocessing techniques in web usage mining: A survey. International Journal of Computer Applications, 97(18).

Tao, D., LeRouge, C. M., Deckard, G., & De Leo, G. (2012). Consumer Perspectives on Quality Attributes in Evaluating Health Websites. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 2675–2684). IEEE.

Valizadeh-Haghi, S., & Fatehi, F. (2015). Evaluating the quality of the internet health resources in diabetes. Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics (Vol. 17, p. A164).

Wagner, T. H., Baker, L. C., Bundorf, M. K., & Singer, S. (2004). Use of the Internet for health information by the chronically ill. Preventing chronic disease, 1(4), A13. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wathen, C. N., & Burkell, J. (2002). Believe it or not: Factors influencing credibility on the Web, 53(2), 134–144.

Weymann, N., Härter, M., & Dirmaier, J. (2014). Quality of online information on type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study. Health promotion international, 30(4), 821–831.

Whitten, P., Nazione, S., & Lauckner, C. (2013). Tools for assessing the quality and accessibility of online health information: initial testing among breast cancer websites. Informatics for Health and Social Care, 38(4), 366–381.

Winker, M. A., Flanagin, A., Chi-Lum, B., White, J., Andrews, K., Kennett, R. L., DeAngelis, C. D., et al. (2000). Guidelines for Medical and Health Information Sites on the Internet. JAMA, 283(12), 1600–1606.

Xiang, Z., & Gretzel, U. (2010). Role of social media in online travel information search. Tourism Management, 31(2), 179–188.

Zhang, P., Zhang, X., Brown, J., Vistisen, D., Sicree, R., Shaw, J., & Nichols, G. (2010). Global healthcare expenditure on diabetes for 2010 and 2030. Diabetes research and clinical practice, 87(3), 293–301.

Abstract

Objective: The patients involvement in disease management can decrease economic burden on diabetic patients and society. Quality health information may help patients to involve in their health management. Thus, individuals need to find the additional information from other information resources such as health websites. Nevertheless, health websites vary in quality and reliability. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify trustable health websites on diabetes. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the reliability of health websites concerning diabetes.

Materials and methods: The keyword ‘’diabetes mellitus ‘’ was entered as a search term into the three most used search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing. The results for first three pages reported by each search engine were selected. After excluding 19 websites, 71 unique websites were eligible for examination. The reliability of websites was evaluated manually using the HONcode of conduct tool by both researchers. Furthermore, HONcode toolbar function was used to recognize officially verified websites.

Results: Only 19 out of 71 websites were officially verified by HONcode foundation. None of the other retrieved websites achieved all 8 principles. Most of the retrieved websites were commercial (67.6%) and the minimum number of the them belongs to university websites (1.4%). The highest and lowest compliance with the HON principles belonged to justifiability (99%), and attribution (51%).

Conclusion: Diabetic patients need high quality information from trustworthy websites to decide better about their health. Thus, physicians should have knowledge about the variable quality of health websites and guide their patients to reliable online resources.