Credibility Of Online Health Information Research Articles

Digital Literacy Among Migrants in Portugal: Access, Usage, and Trust in Health Information

Abstract Background Digital literacy is crucial for effective utilization of health-related services and information. This study evaluates digital literacy among migrants in Portugal, focusing on three key components: access to digital services, usage of these services for health information, and trust in online health resources. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted to assess migrants’ access to digital devices such as smartphones and computers, their ability to use these devices for health-related purposes, and their perceptions of the credibility of online health information. Data were analyzed across various sociodemographic and migration-related factors. Results 1,048 migrants were included, of which 90.3% had access to digital services, and 64.9% reported ease in using these services to obtain health information. Despite widespread access and usability, about 45.6% of migrants doubted the reliability of online health information. Access and usage varied significantly with age, education, income, employment status, and region of origin. Older, less educated, lower-income, and African migrants faced more significant challenges in access and usage. Additionally, trust issues were predominantly reported by females, those with lower education levels, recent arrivals, and non-Portuguese speakers. Conclusions The study highlights significant disparities in digital literacy among migrants, influenced by socio-economic and demographic factors. While access to digital tools is high, challenges in usage and trust present barriers to effective health communication. Key messages • High access to digital services among migrants, yet significant disparities affect older, less educated, and lower-income groups. • Usage difficulties combined with low trust in online health info highlight the need for targeted digital literacy interventions.

From Validation to Assessment of e-Health Literacy: A Study among Higher Education Students in Portugal.

Despite their familiarity with technology, higher education students often lack the critical skills needed to assess the credibility of online health information, potentially impacting their health decisions and well-being. This study aims to validate and assess the e-Health Literacy Scale among those in Portuguese higher education. In addition, this study focused on measuring their e-health literacy levels and investigating how these skills relate to different sociodemographic variables. This cross-sectional study was conducted in two phases. Initially, the test-retest reliability and reproducibility of measured e-health literacy were assessed with a convenience sample of 20 participants. Subsequently, the e-health scale was applied to a group of 245 Portuguese higher education students. The research took place from January 2023 to April 2024. The scale exhibited robust internal consistency and reproducibility. Male gender consistently correlates with higher levels of e-health literacy. Students demonstrate good levels of e-health literacy (24/40), reflecting their ability to effectively navigate and utilize health information online. By integrating strategies to further enhance this literacy into university health programs, students can develop essential skills necessary for making informed decisions about their health. This proactive approach not only empowers students to access reliable health resources but also fosters a culture of health literacy that can positively impact their well-being both during their academic journey and beyond graduation.

Factors influencing online health information credibility: a meta-analysis

PurposeThis study aims to address the growing importance of online health information (OHI) and the associated uncertainty. Although previous research has explored factors influencing the credibility of OHI, results have been inconsistent. Therefore, this study aims to identify the essential factors that influence the perceived credibility of OHI by conducting a meta-analysis of articles published from 2010 to 2022. The study also aims to examine the moderating effects of demographic characteristics, study design and the platforms where health information is located.Design/methodology/approachBased on the Prominence-Interpretation Theory (PIT), a meta-analysis of 25 empirical studies was conducted to explore 12 factors related to information content and source, social interaction, individual and media affordance. Moderators such as age, education level, gender of participants, sample size, platforms and research design were also examined.FindingsResults suggest that all factors, except social support, have significant effects on the credibility of OHI. Among them, argument quality had the strongest correlation with credibility and individual factors were also found to be relevant. Moderating effects indicate that social support was significantly moderated by age and education level. Different sample sizes may lead to variations in the role of social endorsement, while personal involvement was moderated by sample size, platform and study design.Originality/valueThis study enriches the application of PIT in the health domain and provides guidance for scholars to expand the scope of research on factors influencing OHI credibility.

Linguistic indicators for predicting the veracity of online health rumors.

This study aims to examine the role of language in discerning the authenticity of online health rumors. To achieve this goal, it specifically focuses on analyzing five categories of linguistic indicators: (1) emotional language characterized by sentiment words, sensory words, and continuous punctuations, (2) exaggerated language defined by the presence of extreme numbers and extreme adverbs, (3) personalized language denoted by first-person pronouns, (4) unprofessional language represented by typographical errors, and (5) linkage language marked by inclusion of hyperlinks. To conduct the investigation, a dataset consisting of 1,500 information items was utilized. The dataset exhibited a distribution pattern wherein 20% of the information was verified to be true, while the remaining 80% was categorized as rumors. These items were sourced from two prominent rumor-clarification websites in China. A binomial logistic regression was used for data analysis to determine whether the language used in an online health rumor could predict its authenticity. The results of the analysis showed that the presence of sentiment words, continuous punctuation marks, extreme numbers and adverbs in an online health rumor could predict its authenticity. Personalized language, typographical errors, and hyperlinks were also found to be useful indicators for identifying health rumors using linguistic indicators. These results provide valuable insights for identifying health rumors using language-based features and could help individuals and organizations better understand the credibility of online health information.

An attention‐based deep learning model for credibility assessment of online health information

AbstractWith the surge of searching and reading online health‐based articles, maintaining the quality and credibility of online health‐based articles has become crucial. The circulation of deceptive health information on numerous social media sites can mislead people and can potentially cause adverse effects on people's health. To address these problems, this work uses deep learning approaches to automate the assessment and scoring of online health‐related articles' credibility. The paper proposed an Attention‐based Recurrent Multichannel Convolutional Neural Network (ARMCNN) model. The proposed model incorporates a BiLSTM layer, a multichannel CNN layer, and an attention layer and predicts the credibility of online health information. To perform a reliable evaluation of the presented model, we utilize the health articles reviewed by the experts, compiled in a labeled dataset termed “Pubhealth,” which consists of thousands of health articles. The results are evaluated using five performance measures, accuracy, precision, recall, f1‐score, and area under the ROC curve (AUC). Furthermore, we extensively compared the proposed model with different deep learning and machine learning models such as Long short‐term memory (LSTM), Bidirectional LSTM, CNN (Convolutional neural network), and RNN‐CNN. The experimental results showed that the proposed model produced state‐of‐the‐art performance on the used dataset by achieving an accuracy of 0.88, precision of 0.92, recall of 0.87, f1‐score of 0.90, and AUC of 0.94. Further, the proposed model yielded better performance than other benchmarked techniques for the credibility assessment of online health articles.

The design and evaluation of a nudge‐based interface to facilitate consumers' evaluation of online health information credibility

AbstractEvaluating the quality of online health information (OHI) is a major challenge facing consumers. We designed PageGraph, an interface that displays quality indicators and associated values for a webpage, based on credibility evaluation models, the nudge theory, and existing empirical research concerning professionals' and consumers' evaluation of OHI quality. A qualitative evaluation of the interface with 16 participants revealed that PageGraph rendered the information and presentation nudges as intended. It provided the participants with easier access to quality indicators, encouraged fresh angles to assess information credibility, provided an evaluation framework, and encouraged validation of initial judgments. We then conducted a quantitative evaluation of the interface involving 60 participants using a between‐subject experimental design. The control group used a regular web browser and evaluated the credibility of 12 preselected webpages, whereas the experimental group evaluated the same webpages with the assistance of PageGraph. PageGraph did not significantly influence participants' evaluation results. The results may be attributed to the insufficiency of the saliency and structure of the nudges implemented and the webpage stimuli's lack of sensitivity to the intervention. Future directions for applying nudges to support OHI evaluation were discussed.

TA-WHI

The healthcare data available on social media has exploded in recent years. The cures and treatments suggested by non-medical experts can lead to more damage than expected. Assuring the credibility of the information conveyed is an enormous challenge. This study aims to categorize the credibility of online health information into multiple classes. This paper proposes a model named Text Analysis of Web-based Health Information (TA-WHI), based on an algorithm designed for this. It categorizes health-related social media feeds into five categories: sufficient, fabricated, meaningful, advertisement, and misleading. The authors have created their own labeled dataset for this model. For data cleaning, they have designed a dictionary having nouns, adverbs, adjectives, negative words, positive words, and medical terms named MeDF. Using polarity and conditional procedure, the data is ranked and classified into multiple classes. The authors evaluate the performance of the model using deep-learning classifiers such as CNN, LSTM, and CatBoost. The suggested model has attained an accuracy of 98% with CatBoost.

Readability, reliability and credibility of online patient information on skin grafts.

Skin grafting reflects a common dermatological procedure for closing skin defects. Patient education is important for managing expectation and optimising skin graft take. While health information is increasingly accessed on the internet, there are no existing studies assessing their quality. The first 25 results from Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo! search engines using the term 'skin graft' were analysed using a variety of standard instruments. Readability was assessed using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade score (FKG), Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) and the New Dale-Chall Readability Index (NDC). Reliability was assessed using the DISCERN instrument and credibility with the Journal of the American Medical Association Benchmark Criteria (JAMA). Transparency was identified by presence of the Health On the Net Foundation Code certification (HON-code). Seventy-five websites were identified. After exclusion, forty-three remaining websites were analysed with average FKG, GFI and SMOG scores of 7.8, 10.1 and 10.7, respectively. The average NDC was 5.9. The average reliability was fair with a DISCERN score based on the first 15 questions of the instrument of 42.6. The mean JAMA score was 2, and 9 websites displayed the HON-code certificate. Readability, reliability and credibility of online health information regarding skin grafting can be improved. Health care providers should critically assess existing online patient information or develop alternative material to educate patients undergoing skin graft surgery.

The effects of information source and eHealth literacy on consumer health information credibility evaluation behavior

Health consumers can easily access information on the Internet. The quality of online health information varies and overall is concerning. The definition of eHealth literacy implies that consumers' ability to evaluate online health information varies with their eHealth literacy. A lab-based experiment was conducted to investigate how information source and consumers’ eHealth literacy affect their use of different types of indicators and criteria in evaluating the credibility of online health information. Credibility evaluation was viewed as a process of utilizing criteria to interpret webpage indicators. Twenty-five participants each viewed a total of 15 webpages from government, commercial, and online forum sources (five from each). Gaze-cued retrospective think-aloud was employed to elicit the indicators and criteria that participants used to evaluate the webpages. The findings showed that content-related indicators and criteria were used the most in credibility evaluation across different information sources. Participants used source indicators more often than design indicators in evaluating government websites and used design criteria more often than individual factors in evaluating commercial websites. eHealth literacy did not significantly affect credibility evaluation but showed a marginally significant interaction effect with information sources on the number of indicators used. The results enhance our understanding of factors influencing consumer online health information evaluation behavior.

Do We Trust the Crowd? Effects of Crowdsourcing on Perceived Credibility of Online Health Information

ABSTRACT Crowdsourcing websites such as Wikipedia have become go-to places for health information. To what extent do we trust such health content that is generated by other Internet users? Will it make a difference if such entries are curated by medical professionals? Does the affordance of crowdsourcing make users feel like they themselves could be contributors, and does that influence their credibility judgments? We explored these questions with a 2 (Crowdsourcing: absence vs. presence) × 2 (Professional source: absence vs. presence) × 2 (Message: sunscreen vs. milk) between-subjects experiment (N = 189). Two indirect paths for crowdsourcing effects were found. The crowd-as-source path suggests that crowdsourcing negatively affects content credibility through decreased source trustworthiness and information completeness. In contrast, the self-as-source path indicates that crowdsourcing elevates source trustworthiness via heightened interactivity and sense of control. Although the additional professional source raises perceived gatekeeping on the site, it does not have substantial influence on credibility judgments. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Older adultsʼ credibility assessment of online health information: An exploratory study using an extended typology of web credibility

AbstractCredibility assessment is a crucial component in the process of peopleʼs health information seeking, especially in the web context. Finding “credible” health information from a plethora of information on the web may be more challenging for older adults, who have relatively less experience with the Internet. This article reports on the findings of an exploratory study of older adultsʼ credibility assessments of online health information. The data collected through semistructured interviews with 21 older adult Internet users in the United States were analyzed based on the extended typology of web credibility (Choi & Stvilia, 2015, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66, 2399–2414). The findings of the study revealed that older adults paid closer attention to operator‐related credibility cues and heuristics when judging the credibility of health information on the web, followed by content‐ and design‐related ones. Also, the findings suggest that participants who were younger and used the Internet more frequently employed a wider variety of cues and heuristics to evaluate the credibility of online health information. Based on these findings, both theoretical and practical implications of the research and future research directions are discussed.

Index to Volme 62, 2018

Index to Volme 62, 2018

Shortcuts to Well Being? Evaluating the Credibility of Online Health Information through Multiple Complementary Heuristics

Relying on the think-aloud method, this article explores how a diverse group of American adults seek health information online. Analyzing over 350,000 words of interview material and over 43 hours of video screen shots, the study identifies the specific strategies users rely upon in the health-information seeking context. People simultaneously deploy multiple complementary heuristics rather than engage in intensive systematic processing of online information despite the high-stakes nature of these searches. The results contribute nuanced understanding of how diverse adults find and evaluate online information in the important domain of health.

How Adolescents Search for and Appraise Online Health Information: A Systematic Review

To conduct a systematic review of the evidence concerning whether and how adolescents search for online health information and the extent to which they appraise the credibility of information they retrieve. A systematic search of online databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, ERIC) was performed. Reference lists of included papers were searched manually for additional articles. Included were studies on whether and how adolescents searched for and appraised online health information, where adolescent participants were aged 13-18 years. Thematic analysis was used to synthesize the findings. Thirty-four studies met the inclusion criteria. In line with the research questions, 2 key concepts were identified within the papers: whether and how adolescents search for online health information, and the extent to which adolescents appraise online health information. Four themes were identified regarding whether and how adolescents search for online health information: use of search engines, difficulties in selecting appropriate search strings, barriers to searching, and absence of searching. Four themes emerged concerning the extent to which adolescents appraise the credibility of online health information: evaluation based on Web site name and reputation, evaluation based on first impression of Web site, evaluation of Web site content, and absence of a sophisticated appraisal strategy. Adolescents are aware of the varying quality of online health information. Strategies used by individuals for searching and appraising online health information differ in their sophistication. It is important to develop resources to enhance search and appraisal skills and to collaborate with adolescents to ensure that such resources are appropriate for them.

95: PERSONALITY AND CREDIBILITY EVALUATION: ONLINE HEALTH INFORMATION FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF EXPERT USERS

Regarding the high importance of credibility evaluation of health information online in every day and career life, the current research aimed to explore how expert users including students and faculty...

The impact of recommendations and warnings on the quality evaluation of health websites: An online experiment

With the increase in availability of online health information (OHI), consumers need to be able to properly evaluate the quality of health websites. Although several established evaluation criteria for OHI are available, these are rarely used by consumers. To improve people's ability and motivation to critically evaluate OHI, insights into how these criteria can optimally be communicated are needed. This study aims to investigate whether educational messages recommending the use of quality criteria can improve consumers' ability to evaluate OHI credibility, especially among people with low health literacy. We also test whether these messages can yield a stronger effect when combined with information warning consumers against using non-established criteria. In an online experiment, we randomly assigned 403 participants to one of four conditions and asked them to evaluate two websites of different quality. The conditions consisted of recommendations promoting the use of established evaluation criteria, warnings against using commonly adopted non-established criteria, a combination of the two, and a control group. Participants exposed to messages recommending established criteria evaluated the credibility of the lower quality website as poorer, and were better able to discriminate between high and low quality information compared to those in the control group. A combination of recommendations and warnings also improved people's ability to evaluate, but did not yield a stronger effect than the recommendations alone. Subgroup analysis, however, showed that these effects existed only for those with high health literacy. We conclude that providing consumers with criteria to evaluate OHI might be a viable way to improve people's evaluation skills of online health materials. Further research is needed to identify efficient ways to communicate these criteria to low health literate audiences.

Use of internet for accessing healthcare information among patients in an outpatient department of a Tertiary Care Center

Background: Health information is one of the most accessed topics online. Worldwide, about 4.5% of all Internet searches are for health-related informationand more than 70, 000 websites disseminate health information. However, critics question the quality and credibility of online health information as contents are mostly a result of limited research or are commercialised. There is a need to train people to locate relevant websites where they can efficiently retrieve evidence based information and evaluate the same. The study was conducted with the objectives of determining the prevalence of use of internet for accessing healthcare information amongst literate adult population in an urban area and to assess the association between the demography and the reasons of internet use. Methodology: We used an anonymous, cross sectional survey completed by a sample of out patients of 408 individuals who came to a tertiary care centre at Pune during the year 2015. The survey consisted of 17 questions related to behavioural, attitudinal and demographic items. Results: Out of the total of 408 individuals, 256 (63.2%) individuals used internet for health information though 332 (82.4%) of them were aware of authorised websites for health information and 69 (16.9%) thought information available in the internet can be harmful. Also, 63 out of 256 (24.6%) agreed to the fact that they ask questions to their doctors based on the information that they acquired from internet while surfing about that particular disease/ ailment. More individuals (p

User generated content and credibility evaluation of online health information: A meta analytic study

The present study provides a meta-analysis of perceived credibility concerns for user-generated-online-health information. Past work yields inconsistent findings regarding whether high credible versus low credible sources would relate to perceived credibility of online health information. A collection of empirical studies was synthesized to reach an explanation of the conflicting findings. Analysis of 22 effect sizes with 1346 participants indicated that source credibility had no significant overall influence on perceived information credibility (r=0.03, n.s.). However, the variances across the studies suggest that the platform where the information was posted might be a contingent factor. Specifically, when user-generated health information was posted on a common website, high credible sources were significantly related to high perceived information credibility.

Believing in Expertise: How Authors’ Credentials and Language Use Influence the Credibility of Online Health Information

ABSTRACTToday, many people use the Internet to seek health advice. This study examines how an author’s expertise is established and how this affects the credibility of his or her online health information. In a 2 (authors’ credentials: medical vs. nonmedical) × 2 (authors’ language use: technical vs. every day) within-subjects design, 127 study participants, or “seekers,” judged authors’ expertise, benevolence, and integrity as well as the credibility of their medical statements. In addition, we assessed seekers’ awareness of their own knowledge and behavior. Results revealed that users consciously rewarded authors’ credentials and subconsciously punished technical language. Seekers were keenly aware of authors’ credentials and perceived authors with medical credentials to have a higher level of expertise and their information to be more credible. Technical language use negatively affected authors’ integrity and the credibility of their health information, despite seekers being unaware of it. Practical implications for health communication and implications for future research are outlined.

Online health information seeking behaviors among Chinese elderly

The Internet has become an important source of health information for elderly people in China. A controlled user experiment was conducted to understand how Chinese elderly people search for online health information. Twenty elderly people completed three search tasks based on three different health information seeking contexts. Online health information seeking behavior patterns of the elderly were found to include reselecting from results pages, following hyperlinks, and using a query reformulation patter. There was no significant difference with respect to emotion and the three task contexts, as elderly people have positive attitudes regarding the health information seeking process, but cognition within the three task contexts displayed significant differences. There was a significant correlation between education and Internet search proficiency regarding task search performance, while health condition, familiarity with the Internet and credibility of online health information were found to be primary factors that influenced the decision of the elderly to search for online health information.