Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 5, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 18, 2021
Short-video apps as a health information source: The information quality of TikTok videos about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
ABSTRACT
Background:
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has become one of the most critical public health problems around the world. As many COPD patients are using video-based social media to search health information, it is an urgent need to assess the information quality of COPD videos on social media. Recently, the short video app TikTok demonstrated huge potential in disseminating health information, and we notice there are many COPD-related videos available in TikTok. However, the information quality of these COPD videos in TikTok remains unknown.
Objective:
The paper aims to investigate the information quality of COPD videos in TikTok.
Methods:
We initially retrieved 300 videos from TikTok in Dec 2020 and collected a sample of 199 videos for data extraction after a screening process. We extracted the basic video information, coded the video content, and identified each video’s sources. Two independent raters assessed the information quality for each video by employing the DISCERN instrument.
Results:
COPD videos in TikTok are mainly from two kinds of sources: individual users (N= 168) and organizational users (N= 31). The individual users include health professionals, individual science communicators, and general TikTok users, while the organizational users involve for-profit organizations, non-profit organizations, and news agencies. For the 199 videos, each DISCERN item’s mean score ranges from 3.42 to 4.46, with a total mean score of 3.75. The publication reliability (P= 0.040) and overall quality (P= 0.020) have significant differences across six types of sources, while the quality of treatment choices only has a marginally significant difference (P= 0.053) across different sources.
Conclusions:
The overall information quality of COPD videos in TikTok is satisfactory, though the information quality varies across different sources and by specific quality dimensions.
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