Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Nov 2, 2022
Date Accepted: Mar 27, 2023
Critical analysis and cross-comparison between English and Chinese online medical information for patients with adenoid hypertrophy: A cross-sectional study
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the era of information, patients can easily be misled by inaccurate Internet contents thus making not well-informed decisions about medical issues. Adenoid hypertrophy, which is one of the most common causes of upper airway obstruction in children and adolescents, may lead to serious complications like sleep apnea and craniofacial change. However, no critical studies about the quality of websites on adenoid hypertrophy has been done yet, also, no one has ever compared the quality difference between Chinese and English websites.
Objective:
This study aims to (i) analyze the quality of websites accessible by patients and (ii) investigates the quality differences between Chinese and English websites.
Methods:
The term ‘enlarged adenoids’ was used and the first 100 websites excluding advertisements displayed on the top three search engines worldwide and in Chinese mainland were collected. The websites were evaluated based on its accessibility, accountability, interactivity, structure, and content quality (accuracy, content coverage, and objectivity). Cohen’s kappa was calculated, one-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis were performed to compare the results between groups and subgroups.
Results:
The mean score for the content quality of English websites was significantly higher than Chinese ones (6.16> 4.94, p=0.029 in Google/Bing/Yahoo and 6.16> 4.16, p< 0.001 in Baidu/Sougou/Bing CN), Chinese users who are not influenced by the Internet Censorship System are more likely to access to higher-quality online medical information (4.94> 4.16, p= 0.022). In within-group post hoc SNK-q analysis, professional organization and government-sponsored websites were generally of better quality than the other websites for both Chinese and English groups (p< 0.05).
Conclusions:
Generally, the English websites on adenoid hypertrophy are of better quality than Chinese websites, Chinese users residing outside Chinese mainland are less influenced by the inaccurate online medical information.
Citation
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