Background/Purpose:

Rheumatoid arthritis is a common autoimmune disease with complex pathophysiology and varied treatment options, which accounts for many visits to health care professionals. With increasing use of the internet, we assessed the quality, reliability and readability of online information relating to rheumatoid arthritis.

Methods:

The search phrase ‘rheumatoid arthritis’ was used with the three most commonly accessed internet search engines (Googleä, Bingä and Yahooä) to identify websites. The first 25 ‘hits’ (excluding duplicates and excluded websites) for each search were assessed for quality using the DISCERN instrument (score 16-80 points), reliability using the four JAMA benchmarks (assessing authorship, attribution of references, currency (date of posted content) and disclosure of conflict of interest) and readability using the Gunning Fog Index (ideal score 7-8).

Results:

There was significant concordance between the hits returned from each search engine with a total of 27 unique websites identified. The average DISCERN score was 44.9 (SD 10.7), and ranged from 29-62.

Websites that appeared earlier in searches did not have higher DISCERN scores (Pearson correlation -0.09).

The Top 5 websites by DISCERN score are seen in Table 1.

The mean number of JAMA benchmarks was 1.5 (SD 1.05), with currency present in 21/27 (77.8%), appropriate authorship in 8/27 (29.6%), attribution of references in 11/27 (40.7%) and disclosure of interest in only 1/27 (3.7%) of websites.

The average readability of the websites was 13.3 (SD 4.0) using the Gunning Fog Index.

Conclusion:

The overall quality of online health information relating to rheumatoid arthritis, as assessed by the DISCERN instrument, is only fair.

Reliability, as measured by the JAMA benchmarks was of variable quality. Whilst the majority of websites provided dates of posted and updated content, references were available for less than half. The remaining benchmarks were poorly represented.

The readability of websites is higher than recommended for near-universal understanding, requiring an average of year 12 equivalent or higher education for understanding.

This assessment highlights the need for clinicians to provide patients with quality written information regarding rheumatoid arthritis or be able to direct them to websites with high quality information.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/assessing-the-quality-reliability-and-readability-of-online-health-information-regarding-rheumatoid-arthritis/