title: Quality of persian addiction websites: a survey based on silberg, discern and wqet instruments (2011).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nowadays, World Wide Web is an accessible and widespread resource to attain medical information. So physicians and health institutions try to inform patients about different domains of medicine through Web. Addiction is a noteworthy subject in medicine and a controversial issue among them. However, quality of health information on the internet is doubtful. The objective of this study is to determine the quality of Persian addiction websites to offer recommendation for their improvement.
  
  
  METHODS
  This was survey and an applied study that the study population was all Persian addiction websites. Sample of this study was 28 Persian addiction website which were chosen by searching Persian equivalences of 7 key terms (addiction, addict, addiction center, drug, treatment of addiction, recovery of addiction, addiction withdrawal) into the Google and Yahoo search engines. Finally, the websites were ranked based on the Silberg, DISCERN and WQET instruments. Data were analyzed with Excel software using descriptive statistics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The overall mean of websites in Silberg, DISCERN and WQET instruments were 1.42, 41.89, 64.57. Also the results showed that "Unit of Substance Abuse Treatment" belonging to Mashhad University of Medical Sciences was ranked first based on the Silberg, DISCERN and WQET instruments. 5 (from total of 9), 60 (from total of 80) and 82 (from total of normalized grade 82) were grades for this website for these instruments respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It showed that the quality of Persian websites according to Silberg, DISCERN and WQET instruments was "low", "more than half" and "very good" respectively. Not assigning date of entering data, author names, and references of information (authority) were most important missing characteristics of these websites. In addition, lack of interactive opportunities like chat rooms was another problem that leads to dissatisfaction of users.
authors.affiliation: Medical library and information Science, Tehran University of Medical Sciences , Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Razieh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zahedi
authors.forename: Behjat
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Taheri
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shahrzadi
authors.forename: Mehdi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tazhibi
authors.forename: Hasan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ashrafi-rizi
keywords: DISCERN instrument; Persian addiction websites; Silberg instrument; WQET instrument..; evaluation of website; quality of website