BACKGROUND: The Internet is the largest source of health information and is widely used by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients. As information is largely unregulated, our objective was to evaluate the quality, readability, accuracy, and accessibility of the information concerning IBD available on the World Wide Web. METHODS: The phrases "inflammatory bowel disease," "Crohn's disease," and "Ulcerative Colitis" were entered separately as search terms into the 6 most commonly used search engines. Sites were categorized as institutional, pharmaceutical, nonpharmaceutical commercial sites, charitable, support, or alternative medicine. Websites were evaluated for content quality using the validated DISCERN rating instrument. Readability was graded by the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. RESULTS: Of the 76 websites evaluated by DISCERN, 43% of the sites were rated as excellent to good and 57% as fair to poor. Alternative medicine sites scored significant lower (P > 0.05) than institutional, pharmaceutical, and nonpharmaceutical commercial sites. There was no relation between a rating score and the position of a website on the search engine ranking. The median Flesch Reading Ease Score was 41.65 (range, 2.6-77.7) and 11.85 (range, 6.2-21.1) for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of websites containing information on IBD varies widely. Most of the online material available is too difficult to comprehend for a substantial portion of the patient population, and good quality information may be beyond reach of the average information seeker.
BACKGROUND: The Internet is the largest source of health information and is widely used by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients. As information is largely unregulated, our objective was to evaluate the quality, readability, accuracy, and accessibility of the information concerning IBD available on the World Wide Web. METHODS: The phrases "inflammatory bowel disease," "Crohn's disease," and "Ulcerative Colitis" were entered separately as search terms into the 6 most commonly used search engines. Sites were categorized as institutional, pharmaceutical, nonpharmaceutical commercial sites, charitable, support, or alternative medicine. Websites were evaluated for content quality using the validated DISCERN rating instrument. Readability was graded by the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score. RESULTS: Of the 76 websites evaluated by DISCERN, 43% of the sites were rated as excellent to good and 57% as fair to poor. Alternative medicine sites scored significant lower (P > 0.05) than institutional, pharmaceutical, and nonpharmaceutical commercial sites. There was no relation between a rating score and the position of a website on the search engine ranking. The median Flesch Reading Ease Score was 41.65 (range, 2.6-77.7) and 11.85 (range, 6.2-21.1) for the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of websites containing information on IBD varies widely. Most of the online material available is too difficult to comprehend for a substantial portion of the patient population, and good quality information may be beyond reach of the average information seeker.
Authors: Eldin Dzubur; Carine Khalil; Christopher V Almario; Benjamin Noah; Deeba Minhas; Mariko Ishimori; Corey Arnold; Yujin Park; Jonathan Kay; Michael H Weisman; Brennan M R Spiegel Journal: Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken) Date: 2019-02 Impact factor: 4.794
Authors: Ligia Alfaro-Cruz; Isha Kaul; Yan Zhang; Robert Jay Shulman; Bruno Pedro Chumpitazi Journal: Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol Date: 2018-05-22 Impact factor: 11.382
Authors: Ruben Alba-Ruiz; Clara Bermúdez-Tamayo; Jaime Jiménez Pernett; Jose Francisco Garcia-Gutierrez; José Manuel Cózar-Olmo; Beatriz Valero-Aguilera Journal: Telemed J E Health Date: 2013-09-27 Impact factor: 3.536