Evaluating the Quality of Health Information in a Changing Digital Ecosystem / Alla Keselman; Catherine Arnott Smith; Anita C Murcko; David R Kaufman

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Bibliografía: p.11-12

Background: Critical evaluation of online health information has always been central to consumer health informatics. However,
with the emergence of new Web media platforms and the ubiquity of social media, the issue has taken on a new dimension and
urgency. At the same time, many established existing information quality evaluation guidelines address information characteristics
other than the content (eg, authority and currency), target information creators rather than users as their main audience, or do not
address information presented via novel Web technologies.
Objective: The aim of this formative study was to (1) develop a methodological approach for analyzing health-related Web
pages and (2) apply it to a set of relevant Web pages.
Methods: This qualitative study analyzed 25 type 2 diabetes pages, which were derived from the results of a Google search
with the keywords “diabetes,” “reversal,” and “natural.” The coding scheme, developed via a combination of theory- and data-driven
approaches, includes 5 categories from existing guidelines (resource type, information authority, validity of background information
sources, objectivity, and currency) and 7 novel categories (treatment or reversal method, promises and certainty, criticisms of
establishment, emotional appeal, vocabulary, rhetoric and presentation, and use of science in argumentation). The coding involves
both categorical judgment and in-depth narrative characterization. On establishing satisfactory level of agreement on the narrative
coding, the team coded the complete dataset of 25 pages.
Results: The results set included “traditional” static pages, videos, and digitized versions of printed newspapers or magazine
articles. Treatments proposed by the pages included a mixture of conventional evidence-based treatments (eg, healthy balanced
diet exercise) and unconventional treatments (eg, dietary supplements, optimizing gut flora). Most pages either promised or
strongly implied high likelihood of complete recovery. Pages varied greatly with respect to the authors’ stated background and
credentials as well as the information sources they referenced or mentioned. The majority included criticisms of the traditional
health care establishment. Many sold commercial products ranging from dietary supplements to books. The pages frequently
used colloquial language. A significant number included emotional personal anecdotes, made positive mentions of the word cure,
and included references to nature as a positive healing force. Most pages presented some biological explanations of their proposed
treatments. Some of the explanations involved the level of complexity well beyond the level of an educated layperson.
Conclusions: Both traditional and data-driven categories of codes used in this work yielded insights about the resources and
highlighted challenges faced by their users. This exploratory study underscores the challenges of consumer health information
seeking and the importance of developing support tools that would help users seek, evaluate, and analyze information in the
changing digital ecosystem.