Quality of arthritis information on the Internet.

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Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2005 Jun 1;62(11):1184-9. Related Articles,

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Quality of arthritis information on the Internet.

Ansani NT, Vogt M, BA, McKaveney TP, Weber RJ, RB,

Burda M, Kwoh CK, Osial TA, Starz T.

Drug Enforcement Center and Department of Pharmacy and

Therapeutics, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15215,

USA. nicole.ansani@...

PURPOSE: The quality and reliability of Internet-based arthritis

information were studied. METHODS: The search terms " arthritis, "

" osteoarthritis, " and 'rheumatoid arthritis " were entered into the AOL,

MSN, , Google, and Lycos search engines. The Web sites for the

first 40 matches generated by each search engine were grouped by URL

suffix and evaluated on the basis of four categories of criteria:

disease and medication information content, Web-site navigability,

required literacy level, and currentness of information. Ratings were

assigned by using an assessment tool derived from published literature

(maximum score of 15 points). RESULTS: Of the 600 arthritis Web sites

identified, only 69 were unique and included in the analysis.

Fifty-seven percent were .com sites, 20% .org sites, 7% .gov sites, 6%

..edu sites, and 10% other sites. Total scores for individual sites

reviewed ranged from 3 to 14. Eighty percent of .gov sites, 75% of .edu

sites, 29% of other sites, 36% of .com sites, and 21% of .org sites

were within the top tertile of scores. No Web site met the criterion

for being understandable to people with no more than a sixth-grade

reading ability. .Gov sites scored significantly higher overall than

..com sites, .org sites, and other sites. .Edu sites also scored

relatively well. CONCLUSION: The quality of arthritis information on

the Internet varied widely. Sites with URLs having suffixes of .gov and

..edu were ranked higher than other types of sites.

PMID: 15984050 [PubMed - in process]