Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, United States.
OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, Portland, OR, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Apr 19;23(4):e25323. doi: 10.2196/25323.
Most patients use the internet to search for health information. While there is a vast repository of searchable information online, much of the content is unregulated and therefore potentially incorrect, conflicting, or confusing. Abortion information online is particularly prone to being inaccurate as antichoice websites publish purposefully misleading information in formats that appear as neutral resources. To understand how antichoice websites appear neutral, we need to understand the specific website features of antichoice websites that impart an impression of trustworthiness.
We sought to identify the characteristics of false or misleading abortion websites that make these websites appear trustworthy to the public.
We conducted a cross-sectional study using Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform. We used validated questionnaires to ask participants to rate 11 antichoice websites and one neutral website identified by experts, focusing on website content, creators, and design. We collected sociodemographic data and participant views on abortion. We used a composite measure of "mean overall trust" as our primary outcome. Using correlation matrices, we determined which website characteristics were most associated with mean overall trust. Finally, we used linear regression to identify participant characteristics associated with overall trust.
Our analytic sample included 498 participants aged from 22 to 70 years, and 50.1% (247/493) identified as female. Across 11 antichoice websites, creator confidence ("I believe that the creators of this website are honest and trustworthy") had the highest correlation coefficient (strongest relationship) with mean overall trust (coefficient=0.70). Professional appearance (coefficient=0.59), look and feel (coefficient=0.59), perception that the information is created by experts (coefficient=0.59), association with a trustworthy organization (coefficient=0.58), valued features and functionalities (coefficient=0.54), and interactive capabilities (coefficient=0.52) all demonstrated strong relationships with mean overall trust. At the individual level, prochoice leaning was associated with higher overall trust of the neutral website (B=-0.43, 95% CI -0.87 to 0.01) and lower mean overall trust of the antichoice websites (B=0.52, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.99).
The mean overall trust of antichoice websites is most associated with design characteristics and perceived trustworthiness of website creators. Those who believe that access to abortion should be limited are more likely to have higher mean overall trust for antichoice websites.
大多数患者使用互联网搜索健康信息。虽然网上有大量可搜索的信息，但其中很多内容未经监管，因此可能存在错误、冲突或令人困惑。网上的堕胎信息尤其容易不准确，因为反堕胎网站以看似中立的资源形式发布故意误导的信息。为了了解反堕胎网站如何显得中立，我们需要了解赋予这些网站可信度的反堕胎网站的具体网站特征。
我们旨在确定使这些网站对公众具有可信度的虚假或误导性堕胎网站的特征。
我们使用亚马逊的 Mechanical Turk 平台进行了一项横断面研究。我们使用经过验证的问卷要求参与者对 11 个反堕胎网站和一个由专家确定的中立网站进行评分，重点关注网站内容、创建者和设计。我们收集了社会人口统计学数据和参与者对堕胎的看法。我们使用“总体信任度均值”作为主要结果。使用相关矩阵，我们确定了与总体信任度最相关的网站特征。最后，我们使用线性回归确定与总体信任度相关的参与者特征。
我们的分析样本包括 498 名年龄在 22 至 70 岁之间的参与者，其中 50.1%（247/493）为女性。在 11 个反堕胎网站中，创建者信心（“我相信该网站的创建者是诚实可信的”）与总体信任度均值的相关系数（最强关系）最高（系数=0.70）。专业外观（系数=0.59）、外观和感觉（系数=0.59）、信息由专家创建的感知（系数=0.59）、与值得信赖的组织的关联（系数=0.58）、有价值的功能和特性（系数=0.54）以及交互功能（系数=0.52）均与总体信任度均值呈强相关。在个体层面，支持选择的倾向与对中立网站的总体信任度较高（B=-0.43，95%CI -0.87 至 0.01）和对反堕胎网站的总体信任度较低有关（B=0.52，95%CI 0.05 至 0.99）。
反堕胎网站的总体信任度与网站创建者的设计特征和感知可信度最相关。那些认为应该限制堕胎的人更有可能对反堕胎网站的总体信任度更高。
