Alkhuwaiter Shahad S, Alssafi Fatimah, Alshunaiber Renad, Ahmed Yasser Bin, Albdah Bayan
Department of Orthodontic and Pediatric Dentistry, College of Dentistry, Qassim University, Qassim, Saudi Arabia.
Private Dental Practice, Pediatric Dentistry, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi J Med Med Sci. 2024 Apr-Jun;12(2):188-193. doi: 10.4103/sjmms.sjmms_443_23. Epub 2024 Apr 5.
Patients are increasingly using the internet for searching health-related information. However, the quality and readability of the information available on the internet need to be assessed. To date, no study has assessed the quality and readability of web-based Arabic health information on early childhood caries.
To evaluate the quality and readability of patient-oriented online Arabic health information regarding early childhood caries.
For this infodemiological study, the Google and Yahoo search engines were searched using specific Arabic terms for early childhood caries, and the top 100 searches from both search engines were considered. Eligible websites were categorized in terms of affiliation as commercial, health portal, dental practice, professional, and journalism. The quality of the websites was assessed using the QUality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST), and readability using the Gunning Fog index (GFI).
A total of 140 websites were included after applying the exclusion criteria, of which 50.7% websites were of journalism. The majority of the websites (70%) had an overall low-quality level, with a QUEST score <10. The quality of websites retrieved from Google searches was of significantly higher quality than those from Yahoo ( < 0.0001). More than half (51.4%) of the websites had good readability, with a GFI score ≤8. Journalism websites had a significantly higher proportion of websites with poor readability level (62%) compared with other affiliations ( = 0.0072).
The web-based Arabic information regarding early childhood caries is currently of low quality and moderate readability level, thereby indicating a need for improving such patient-facing content.
患者越来越多地使用互联网搜索与健康相关的信息。然而，互联网上可用信息的质量和可读性需要评估。迄今为止，尚无研究评估基于网络的阿拉伯语儿童早期龋齿健康信息的质量和可读性。
评估面向患者的关于儿童早期龋齿的在线阿拉伯语健康信息的质量和可读性。
在这项信息流行病学研究中，使用与儿童早期龋齿相关的特定阿拉伯语词汇在谷歌和雅虎搜索引擎上进行搜索，并考虑来自两个搜索引擎的前100条搜索结果。符合条件的网站根据所属类型分为商业、健康门户网站、牙科诊所、专业和新闻类。使用质量评估评分工具（QUEST）评估网站质量，使用冈宁雾度指数（GFI）评估可读性。
应用排除标准后，共纳入140个网站，其中50.7%的网站属于新闻类。大多数网站（70%）的整体质量水平较低，QUEST评分<10。从谷歌搜索中检索到的网站质量明显高于从雅虎检索到的网站（<0.0001）。超过一半（51.4%）的网站具有良好的可读性，GFI评分≤8。与其他类型的网站相比，新闻类网站中可读性差的网站比例显著更高（62%）（=0.0072）。
目前，基于网络的阿拉伯语儿童早期龋齿信息质量较低，可读性中等，因此表明需要改进此类面向患者的内容。
