Evaluating the Quality of Diabetes Information on the Internet
Author Information
Author(s): Joshua J Seidman, Donald Steinwachs, Haya R Rubin, Russell E Glasgow
Primary Institution: Center for Information Therapy, Healthwise, Inc.
Hypothesis
This research sought to develop a new performance-measurement tool for evaluating the quality of Internet health information.
Conclusion
Diabetes Web site quality varies widely, and the new tool could help evaluate the quality of Internet health sites.
Supporting Evidence
- Overall scores ranged from 15% to 95%, with a mean of 50% and median of 51%.
- Lin's concordance correlation coefficient produced a rho of 0.761, suggesting moderate to high agreement.
- The average agreement between raters for the performance measures was 0.80.
Takeaway
This study created a tool to check how good diabetes information is on the Internet, and found that the quality is very different from one site to another.
Methodology
An objective, systematic tool was developed to evaluate Internet diabetes information based on a quality-of-care measurement framework, including 7 structural measures and 34 performance measures.
Potential Biases
The presence of only one external reviewer may introduce bias, and the lack of blinding could affect evaluation scores.
Limitations
The study only addresses diabetes, and the evaluation may be influenced by the reviewers' biases and the dynamic nature of web content.
Statistical Information
P-Value
0.001
Confidence Interval
95% CI, 0.607-0.916
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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