The Readability and Quality of Web-Based Patient Information on Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Quantitative Content Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The Internet has become a major source of information on health-related issues. OBJECTIVE The aim is to evaluate the quality and readability of online information present on nasopharyngeal cancer using recognised scoring tools METHODS Keywords including “nasopharyngeal cancer” and “nasopharyngeal carcinoma” were searched for using internet search engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. Website authorship were classified: academic, commercial, or unspecified. Each website was assessed for readability using the Flesch Reading Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. Quality of information was assessed using the JAMA and DISCERN tools and presence of a HONcode seal. RESULTS A total of thirty websites were included in our study. Over half of the websites were academic (60%; 18/30). The average JAMA and DISCERN scores of all websites were 2.57  0.95 and 50.38  11.82, respectively, with a median of 2.0 (range 1-4) and 53.50 (range 29-75), respectively. Commercial websites had the highest JAMA score with a mean of 3.50  0.52. Academic websites had the highest DISCERN score with a mean of 50.83  12.19. Five websites had the HON code seal. Commercial websites had a significantly higher JAMA mean score than academic (P-value < .001) and unspecified (P < .04) websites. Readability was difficult as none of the websites were at or below the recommended sixth-grade readability level. CONCLUSIONS Internet information relating to nasopharyngeal cancer is of variable and suboptimal quality. Given this variability in quality, healthcare providers should direct patients to known sources of reliable, readable online information. Identification of reliable sources may be aided by known markers of quality such as HON-code certification. CLINICALTRIAL n