A Systematic Review of Patient Inflammatory Bowel Disease Information Resources on the World Wide Web
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The Internet is a widely used information resource for patients with inflammatory bowel disease, but there is variation in the quality of Web sites that have patient information regarding Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The purpose of the current study is to systematically evaluate the quality of these Web sites. METHODS: The top 50 Web sites appearing in Google using the terms "Crohn's disease" or "ulcerative colitis" were included in the study. Web sites were evaluated using a (a) Quality Evaluation Instrument (QEI) that awarded Web sites points (0-107) for specific information on various aspects of inflammatory bowel disease, (b) a five-point Global Quality Score (GQS), (c) two reading grade level scores, and (d) a six-point integrity score. RESULTS: Thirty-four Web sites met the inclusion criteria, 16 Web sites were excluded because they were portals or non-IBD oriented. The median QEI score was 57 with five Web sites scoring higher than 75 points. The median Global Quality Score was 2.0 with five Web sites achieving scores of 4 or 5. The average reading grade level score was 11.2. The median integrity score was 3.0. CONCLUSIONS: There is marked variation in the quality of the Web sites containing information on Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Many Web sites suffered from poor quality but there were five high-scoring Web sites.
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The Global Quality Score (GQS) is a widely validated 5-point Likert scale originally developed for patient-facing web-based health content and subsequently validated for short-form video health content analyses.
“The Global Quality Score (GQS), a widely validated 5-point Likert scale (1 = poor to 5 = excellent) originally developed to evaluate the overall educational quality of patient-facing web-based health content and subsequently validated for use in short-form video health content analyses20–24”
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- Authors
- Bernard, A., Langille, M., Hughes, S., Rose, C., Leddin, D., & Veldhuyzen van Zanten, S.
- Affiliations
- Dalhousie University (CA)
- Venue
- The American Journal of Gastroenterology
- Published
- 2007-09
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 2070-2077
- ISSN
- 0002-9270 (ISSN-L)
- 1572-0241
- OpenAlex
- W1963659399
- Cited by
- 1,197
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 359 · 2025: 211 · 2024: 169 · 2023: 144 · 2022: 113 · 2021: 81 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 1.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The American Journal of Gastroenterology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Literacy and Information Accessibility
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Keywords
- inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, patient information resources, health information websites, website quality evaluation, Global Quality Score, reading level, patient education
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Information Storage and Retrieval, Internet
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