Assessing the Quality, Content and Readability of Freely Available Online Information Regarding Diabetic Retinopathy

Online content regarding diabetic retinopathy is generally low-quality and too convoluted, as reported by a study presented by Amy Kloosterboer, BS, MS, from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, at the 37^th ASRS Annual Meeting.

To conduct this study, researchers performed a Google search using the term “diabetic retinopathy” before selecting to assess 11 major medical (American Academy of Ophthalmology, All About Vision, American Optometric Association, ASRS, EyeWiki, Mayo Clinic, Medical News Today, MedicineNet, NEI, WebMD, and Wikipedia) for analysis. Subsequently, 26 questions were composed to include relevant information to patients while each respective website was independently evaluated – both by a vitreoretinal surgeon (JS) and two fellows (NY and NP). JAMA benchmarks were used to discern site quality, and data readability was analyzed by Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, Gunning Fog Score, Coleman Liau Index, and SMOG Index.

According to the findings of this study, there was a notable difference between the content quality of the websites (P=0.004), and between the top scoring website, Wikipedia, and the lowest scoring website, WebMD (P=0.04). The mean FRE score was 46.05 (SD, 11.92) while the mean reading grade for all websites was 11.30 (SD, 1.79). The study found a significant correlation between the FRE score and mean reading grade level. However, no significant correlation was found between website quality and the average reading grade (P=0.17), nor the quality and ranking in Google search (P=0.432). Overall, no website met the full four JAMA benchmarks, and only one website achieved three JAMA benchmarks. The findings suggest that there was no correlation between the quality of the website and JAMA benchmarks (P=0.196).

In concluding the results, the authors wrote that “freely available information online about diabetic retinopathy varies by source but is generally of low quality. The material presented is difficult to interpret and exceeds the recommended reading level for health information.”

Kloosterboer A. Assessing the Quality, Content, and Readability of Freely Available Online Information Regarding Diabetic Retinopathy. Presented at the 37^th ASRS Annual Meeting; July 26-30, 2019; Chicago, IL.

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