THE QUALITY OF INFORMATION ABOUT INFLUENZA ON THE ROMANIAN INTERNET
Abstract:
Inaccurate information on the Internet can adversely influence the effectiveness of public
health efforts for controlling the influenza epidemic. The purpose of the present study was to assess the
quality of information about seasonal influenza on the Romanian websites as far as completeness,
accuracy and potential risks for the general Internet users. We evaluated a sample of 20 relevant sites
selected from the Google's search results pages. The average relative completeness score was 5.75 (of
the possible 10), the average relative accuracy score was 7.55 (also of the possible 10) and the average
risk score was 7.60 (ranging from 0 for the best sites up to 13 for the poorest quality site). Based on our
results, we concluded that the overall quality of the information about flu on the Romanian websites is
modest and the users have to search methodically the topic to obtain full and accurate information.
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