IngentaConnect A quality evaluation methodology of health web-pages for non-prof...

Authors: Vincenzo Currò¹; Paola Sabrina Buonuomo¹; Roberta Onesimo¹; Paola De Rose¹; Andrea Vituzzi²; Gian Luca Di Tanna³; Alessandro D'Atri²

Source: Medical Informatics and the Internet in Medicine, Volume 29, Number 2, June 2004 , pp. 95-107(13)

Publisher: Taylor and Francis Ltd

Abstract:

Primary objective: The proposal of an evaluation methodology for determining the quality of healthcare web sites for the dissemination of medical information to non-professionals.

Methods and procedures: Three (macro) factors are considered for the quality evaluation: medical contents, accountability of the authors, and usability of the web site. Starting from two results in the literature the problem of whether or not to introduce a weighting function has been investigated. This methodology has been validated on a specialized information content, i.e., sore throats, due to the large interest such a topic enjoys with target users. The World Wide Web was accessed using a meta-search system merging several search engines. A statistical analysis was made to compare the proposed methodology with the obtained ranks of the sample web pages.

Main outcome and results: The statistical analysis confirms that the variables examined (per item and sub factor) show substantially similar ranks and are capable of contributing to the evaluation of the main quality macro factors. A comparison between the aggregation functions in the proposed methodology (non-weighted averages) and the weighting functions, derived from the literature, allowed us to verify the suitability of the method.

Conclusions: The proposed methodology suggests a simple approach which can quickly award an overall quality score for medical web sites oriented to non-professionals.

Keywords: Web quality; Scoring methods; Sore throat; Medical information; Non-professionals

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/14639230410001684396

Affiliations: 1: Istituto di Clinica Pediatrica Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Roma 2: Centro di Ricerca sui Sistemi Informativi LUISS "Guido Carli" - Roma Roma 3: Scuola di Specializzazione in Statistica Sanitaria Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

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A quality evaluation methodology of health web-pages for non-professionals