Quality of web pages about second‐trimester medical abortion: A cross‐sectional study of readability, comprehensiveness, and transparency

Abstract

Aims To investigate the readability, comprehensiveness and transparency of web pages about medical abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy. Design A cross‐sectional descriptive study of Swedish web pages. Methods Six systematic searches were performed in Google during January 2017. The first 10 hits of each search were screened, resulting in 46 included Swedish web pages. The web pages were analyzed with readability index (LIX) to investigate readability, inductive manifest content analysis to investigate comprehensiveness, and Journal of the Medical Association benchmarks to investigate transparency. Results Median LIX was 29.0 and the largest proportion had LIX 31–40 (N = 17), indicating moderate readability. Visual components were observed in 13 websites. Content analysis resulted in 12 categories illustrating comprehensiveness, but eight of these were only included in ≤50% web pages. With regard to transparency, 29 (63%) adhered to no benchmark, 15 (33%) adhered to one benchmark, and 2 (4%) adhered to two benchmarks. Most web pages were written or reviewed by laypersons (N = 25) and health professionals (N = 11). Conclusion The results indicate that web pages about medical abortion have moderate readability, varied comprehensiveness and poor transparency. Impact Health professionals need to acknowledge the risk of contact with web‐based information about poor quality. There is a need for research that aims to increase the chances that patients encounter high‐quality web‐based information about medical abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Readability of web-based sources about induced abortion: a cross-sectional study

“…Quality of web-based information is multidimensional and concerns many aspects besides readability [43,44], many of which have been investigated in previous studies. According to previous assessments performed by health professionals and researchers, websites about abortion have considerable quality deficits in regard to comprehensiveness [23,27], accuracy [25,45], and transparency [27]. Laypersons also report issues with web-based information about abortions related to quality of information about treatment options, reliability, language, understandability, tone, design, layout, and logic [26].…”

“…Many of these studies report difficult readability levels, which may hinder information uptake among those seeking information about a health-related topic. While studies indicate that web-based information about induced abortions have low quality in regard to various aspects, including information about treatment options, accuracy and comprehensiveness [23][24][25][26][27], little is still known about the readability of such sources.…”

Higher readability of institutional websites drives the correct fruition of the abortion pathway: A cross-sectional study

“…As for abortion services, some studies have explored the readability of web-based sources informing women about the abortion pathway [14,15], but no data is available in the Italian context. The importance of pre-abortion communication strategies for an informed, conscious, and shared decision has been described [16][17][18].…”