Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Jun 1, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 7, 2020
Trends in Web Searches About Causes and Treatments of Autism Over the Past 15 Years: An Exploratory Infodemiology Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Ninety percent of Americans use the Internet and the majority of Internet users report looking online for health information using search engines. While the Internet has widespread information about autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it has also led to misinformation and perpetuated misperceptions related to the causes and treatment of ASD. Infodemiology is an area of health informatics research using big data analytics to understand online search behaviour.
Objective:
The objectives were to: 1) use infodemiological data to analyze trends in Internet searches over time about causes and treatments of ASD; and 2) inform clinicians, paediatric organizations and policymakers about public queries regarding ASD.
Methods:
The infodemiology methodology framework for Google Trends analyses as outlined by Mavragani and Ochoa (2019) were used. Google Trends is the most commonly used infodemiology tool. Google Trends applies algorithms to assess frequency of online searches comparing different terms. These analyses focused on searches in the United States from 2004 to 2019. The terms analyzed were comprised of key words from common questions about causes of ASD including vaccines, genetics, environmental factors, and microbiome; and separate analyses for queries about therapies including: applied behaviour analysis (ABA), gluten free diet, chelation therapy, marijuana, probiotics, and stem cell therapy.
Results:
Google Trend results are normalized on a scale ranging from 0 to 100 to represent the frequency and relative interest of search topics. For searches about causes of ASD, vaccines had the greatest frequency compared to other terms, with a peak observed in 2008, reaching the highest frequency in 2015, with a current upward trend. In comparison, searches about genetics, environmental factors and microbiome occurred less frequently. For online searches about ASD therapies, ABA consistently had a high frequency of online interest since 2004. The analyses of chelation therapy and gluten free diet showed high trending interest in 2005 and 2007, respectively, followed by a steady decline since. Searches related to ASD and marijuana showed a rise in 2009 and continue to trend upward. Searches about probiotics and stem cell therapies have both been relatively low yet are gradually gaining interest, with more overall queries about probiotics than stem cell therapy.
Conclusions:
Using Google Trends is an effective strategy to analyze large-scale web-search trends about ASD. High interest continues surrounding vaccinations and ASD with less searches about the role of genetics. ABA has exhibited a consistently high frequency of online interest, while other therapies have trended and then lost interest over time (i.e., gluten free diets and chelation therapy). Marijuana, less so probiotics and stem cell therapy, appear to be gaining interest online. This information can be used to inform clinicians, health organizations and policymakers to target online education and communication strategies and provide up-to-date information in areas of public online interest.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.