Quality of online information for the general public on COVID-19.
Ravindri Jayasinghe, Sonali Ranasinghe, Umesh Jayarajah and 1 others
PMID 32800422WHAT IT FOUND
Most public COVID-19 websites were hard to read and unreliable: only 3 of 84 met recommended reading, and 78 scored low reliability.
Certified sites scored higher, but only 34 stated publication dates and 51 did not declare sources.
Key findings
01Only three websites (3.6%) had a readability score above 70, the recommended standard for the public.
0278 websites scored low reliability, below 50%.
03The top 10 websites had excellent content quality scores, and HON-code certified websites had higher content quality scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The websites were assessed at one time, in the first week of May 2020, so content and search results may have changed. Search engine results can vary by location, popularity and algorithm, so the exact set of websites may not be reproducible. The study analysed website content, not patients, families or the public, so it did not show how anyone understood or used the information. The paper reports associations with government status and certification, not proof that these factors caused better quality. The text gives overlapping counts for source declaration and disclosure statements, so source information is unclear.
Declared interests
No funding was reported, and the authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the better scores for government and certified websites as proof that patients understood the information or that certification causes quality. This was a website analysis, not a patient study, and the search was done at one time on search engines.