ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION CONTENT AND GENERAL QUALITY OF OBESITY AND EATING DISORDERS WEBSITES.
BACKGROUND
nowadays, the Internet is increasingly used by providers as a source of information for eating disorder health issues. However, health information on the Internet remains unregulated and varies in quality, accuracy and readability.


OBJECTIVE
the objective of this study was to determine both general and information quality of eating disorder websites, including obesity websites.


METHODS
three key terms (obesity, anorexia and bulimia) were entered into the Google search engine. Websites were assessed using two tests (HonCode certification and Bermudez-Tamayo et al. test) to analyze overall quality, and a third test (DISCERN test) to analyze specifically information quality.


RESULTS
there were no significant differences regarding overall quality among the different pathologies studied (p = 0.197), although anorexia websites tended to obtain lower quality scores. Furthermore, all evaluated websites showed significant deficiencies regarding information quality (p = 0.032). Nevertheless, obesity websites showed a significant higher information quality than anorexia websites.


CONCLUSIONS
the overall quality of eating disorders websites is moderate, but the information quality that they contain is fairly poor. Remarkably, anorexia nervosa websites showed both the lower information and general quality, while bulimia websites showed a higher general quality and obesity websites presented the most reliable information.
Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Catholic University of Murcia, Spain.. jjhernandez@ucam.edu.
Juan José
JJ
Hernández-Morante
Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Catholic University of Murcia, Spain.. jjhernandez@ucam.edu.
Diana
D
Jiménez-Rodríguez
Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Catholic University of Murcia, Spain.. jjhernandez@ucam.edu.
Rubén
R
Cañavate
Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, Catholic University of Murcia, Spain.. jjhernandez@ucam.edu.
María del Carmen
Mdel C
Conesa-Fuentes
D054626:Consumer Health Information; D001068:Feeding and Eating Disorders; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D020407:Internet; D009765:Obesity; D064878:Web Browser