Websites as a Gate of Pharmacy Schools to the World: Does National Accreditation Cause a Difference?

Abstract

Websites have become the main information source, being a crucial element of our daily life and a global network. In this context, the importance of the websites of pharmacy schools is considered not only for their educational mission, but also for their gates to the world. In this study, we evaluated the websites of pharmacy schools based on criteria issued in the literature. Websites of all pharmacy schools in Türkiye were evaluated by scoring the availability of predetermined items, where t-tests and paired t-test were used to compare the groups. As a result, we found that there is no statistical difference between private and public and accredited or non-accredited schools (p>0.05). Also, we observed no statistical difference between the scores in 2012 and 2021 (p>0.05). Most pharmacy schools in this study were public, and the accreditation status still seems challenging. Of these 39 schools, only 14 schools are accredited. Total scores of public schools were found to be higher than the private ones and notably, accredited schools have higher scores. Yet, there is no statistically difference between accredited and non-accredited schools or public and private schools. Importance of websites as a communication tool for higher education institutions (HEIs) is indisputable. In conclusion, pharmacy schools should keep up to date with their official websites, considering the virtual world we fell into with the web technologies' developments. Also, further studies should be conducted on the websites of pharmacy schools regarding user demands. Besides we suggest that pharmacy schools' website' quality should be improved and keeping them up to date should be ensured.