Al-Jefri Majed, Evans Roger, Uchyigit Gulden, Ghezzi Pietro
School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom.
Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Falmer, United Kingdom.
Front Med (Lausanne). 2018 Sep 20;5:260. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2018.00260. eCollection 2018.
The popularity of seeking health information online makes information quality (IQ) a public health issue. The present study aims at building a theoretical framework of health information quality (HIQ) that can be applied to websites and defines which IQ criteria are important for a website to be trustworthy and meet users' expectations. We have identified a list of HIQ criteria from existing tools and assessment criteria and elaborated them into a questionnaire that was promoted via social media and mainly the University. Responses (329) were used to rank the different criteria for their importance in trusting a website and to identify patterns of criteria using hierarchical cluster analysis. HIQ criteria were organized in five dimensions based on previous theoretical frameworks as well as on how they cluster together in the questionnaire response. We could identify a top-ranking dimension (scientific completeness) that describes what the user is expecting to know from the websites (in particular: description of symptoms, treatments, side effects). Cluster analysis also identified a number of criteria borrowed from existing tools for assessing HIQ that could be subsumed to a broad "ethical" dimension (such as conflict of interests, privacy, advertising policies) that were, in general, ranked of low importance by the participants. Subgroup analysis revealed significant differences in the importance assigned to the various criteria based on gender, language and whether or not of biomedical educational background. We identified criteria of HIQ and organized them in dimensions. We observed that ethical criteria, while regarded highly in the academic and medical environment, are not considered highly by the public.
在网上寻求健康信息的行为日益普遍，这使得信息质量成为一个公共卫生问题。本研究旨在构建一个适用于网站的健康信息质量（HIQ）理论框架，并确定哪些信息质量标准对于一个值得信赖且能满足用户期望的网站至关重要。我们从现有的工具和评估标准中确定了一份HIQ标准清单，并将其细化为一份问卷，该问卷通过社交媒体，主要是大学进行推广。收集到的329份回复被用于对不同标准在信任网站方面的重要性进行排名，并使用层次聚类分析来识别标准模式。基于先前的理论框架以及它们在问卷回复中的聚类方式，HIQ标准被组织为五个维度。我们能够确定一个排名靠前的维度（科学完整性），它描述了用户期望从网站了解的内容（特别是：症状描述、治疗方法、副作用）。聚类分析还确定了一些从现有的HIQ评估工具中借鉴的标准，这些标准可以归入一个宽泛的“伦理”维度（如利益冲突、隐私、广告政策），总体而言，参与者对这些标准的重视程度较低。亚组分析显示，基于性别、语言以及是否具有生物医学教育背景，参与者对各项标准重要性的赋值存在显著差异。我们确定了HIQ标准并将其组织成不同维度。我们观察到，伦理标准虽然在学术和医学环境中受到高度重视，但公众对其重视程度并不高。
