Developing and evaluating the GriefLink web site: processes, protocols, dilemmas and lessons learned.
Despite a profusion of recommendations regarding the quality of web sites and guidelines related to ethical issues surrounding health-related sites, there is little guidance for the design and evaluation of sites relating to loss and grief. This article, which addresses these deficiencies, results from a community consultation process of designing and evaluating a web site--GriefLink--for bereaved consumers and for the professionals who help them. It presents the literature review that informed the project, the recommendations for design and content, the lessons learned through the process itself, and the difficulties of evaluating the benefits of a grief-related web site. Some ethical and legal dilemmas in developing grief-related web sites are discussed and issues of design, content, process, evaluation, and general features are addressed, which may also be applied to other communication forms for loss and grief matters, such as the print media.
Clark
Sheila
S
Department of General Practice, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. sheila.clark@adelaide.edu.au
Burgess
Teresa
T
Laven
Gillian
G
Bull
Michael
M
Marker
Julie
J
Browne
Eric
E
D001315:Australia; D003219:Confidentiality; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D017144:Focus Groups; D006117:Grief; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards*; D018907:Privacy; D011786:Quality Control; D012944:Social Support; D014584:User-Computer Interface