ArticleTheScientificWorldJournal2020
Quality of Novel Coronavirus Related Health Information over the Internet: An Evaluation Study.
Article in TheScientificWorldJournal, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Quality of web-based information about the coronavirus disease 2019: a rapid systematic review of infodemiology studies published during the first year of the pandemic.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Exploring Online Health Information-Seeking Behavior Among Young Adults: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- When Patients Go to "Dr. Google" Before They Go to the Emergency Department.AMIA ... Annual Symposium proceedings. AMIA Symposium · 2024Observational
- Exploring LatinoSSM. Qualitative research in health · 2022Article
- Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake in Healthcare Workers: A Cross-Sectional Study in Greece.Journal of occupational and environmental medicine · 2022Article
- Predictors of Real-World Parents' Acceptance to Vaccinate Their Children Against the COVID-19.Acta medica Lituanic · 2022Article
- Quality of web-based information at the beginning of a global pandemic: a cross-sectional infodemiology study investigating preventive measures and self care methods of the coronavirus disease 2019.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Compounded research challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic.Anaesthesia, critical care & pain medicine · 2020Article
- India's COVID-19 Burdens, 2020.Frontiers in public healthReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread globally from its epicenter in Hubei, China, and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. The most popular search engine worldwide is Google, and since March 2020, COVID-19 has been a global trending search term. Misinformation related to COVID-19 from these searches is a problem, and hence, it is of high importance to assess the quality of health information over the internet related to COVID-19. The objective of our study is to examine the quality of COVID-19 related health information over the internet using the DISCERN tool.
methodsThe keywords included in assessment of COVID-19 related information using Google's search engine were "Coronavirus," "Coronavirus causes," "Coronavirus diagnosis," "Coronavirus prevention," and "Coronavirus management". The first 20 websites from each search term were gathered to generate a list of 100 URLs. Duplicate sites were excluded from this search, allowing analysis of unique sites only. Additional exclusion criteria included scientific journals, nonoperational links, nonfunctional websites (where the page was not loading, was not found, or was inactive), and websites in languages other than English. This resulted in a unique list of 48 websites. Four independent raters evaluated the websites using a 16-item DISCERN tool to assess the quality of novel coronavirus related information available on the internet. The interrater reliability agreement was calculated using the intracluster correlation coefficient.
resultsResults showed variation in how the raters assigned scores to different website categories. The .com websites received the lowest scores. Results showed that .edu and .org website category sites were excellent in communicating coronavirus related health information; however, they received lower scores for treatment effect and treatment choices.
conclusionThis study highlights the gaps in the quality of information that is available on the websites related to COVID-19 and study emphasizes the need for verified websites that provide evidence-based health information related to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.