Journal of Public Health Medicine 22:191-197 (2000)
© 2000 Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom
Web page quality: can we measure it and what do we find? A report of exploratory findings
VP Abbott
Department of Public Health, North West Lancashire Health Authority, Wesham Park Hospital, Wesham PR4 3AL, UK
Background.The aim of this study was to report exploratory findings from an attempt to quantify the quality of a sample of World Wide Web (WWW) pages relating to MMR vaccine that a typical user might locate.
Method.Forty pages obtained from a search of the WWW using two search engines and the search expression 'mmr vaccine' were analysed using a standard proforma. The proforma looked at the information the pages contained in terms of three categories: content, authorship and aesthetics. The information from each category was then quantified into a summary statistic, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated using a 'gold standard' of quality derived from the published literature. Optimal cut-off points for each of the three sections were calculated that best discriminated 'good' from 'bad' pages. Pages were also assessed as to whether they were pro- or anti-vaccination.
Results.For this sample, the combined contents and authorship score, with a cut-off of five, was a good discriminator, having 88 per cent sensitivity and 92 per cent specificity. Aesthetics was not a good discriminator. In the sample, 32.5 per cent of pages were pro-vaccination; 42.5 per cent were anti-vaccination and 25 per cent were neutral. The relative risk of being of poor quality if anti-vaccination was 3.3 (95 per cent confidence interval 1.8, 6.1).
Conclusion.The sample of Web pages did not contain some quality information on MMR vaccine. It also contained a great deal of misleading, inaccurate data. The proforma, combined with a knowledge of the literature, may help to distinguish between the two.
Keywords: World Wide Web, quality, ROC curves, MMR vaccine
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