Evaluating the Quality of Web Sites

Are there any guidelines I can use to evaluate the quality of web sites I find?

The World Wide Web is neither a refereed source nor a peer-reviewed forum. There are no restrictions on who can post a web site or what content they can provide by doing so. Health care providers must therefore be careful to use their professionally educated judgment when evaluating web sites or when counseling their patients who have consulted the web for health advice.

Following are a list of guidelines you can use when evaluating the quality of web sites (adapted from "How to Evaluate Internet Resources," from Florida Atlantic University Libraries, July 1999):

1. Scope and Intended Audience

   • For whom is the site intended (health care providers, health professions students, patients, etc.)?
   • How comprehensive and detailed does the site claim to be, and does it meet these expectations?

2. Content

   • Does the content seem accurate and valid based on your professional education and training?
   • How much of the content is factual? How much is opinion?
   • How much of the content is original v. links to other resources?
   • Is full-text content available?

3. Authority & Affiliation

   • Is the site affiliated with a recognized national or international government or organization?
   • Was the site developed by an academic institution or recognized business with an established reputation?
   • Was the site written by a recognized authority in the field, and can the author be contacted?
   • Was the content peer-reviewed?

   Note: Following is a list of meanings for domain address suffixes:
   .gov	government institution
   .edu	educational institution
   .com	commercial service.
   Both .edu and .com domains often provide space to their users for personal web sites. Such personal web pages often contain a tilde (~) in the path. For example: http://webpages.marshall.edu/~mccarthy.

4. Currency

   • Is the information time-sensitive, and if so, is it up-to-date (revision dates are often displayed at the bottom of web pages)?
   • When was the content actually developed?
   • Does the site appear to be maintained and updated regularly?
   • Are links to external resources functional?

5. Design

   • Is the site well-designed so that desired information is easy to find?
   • Is it easy to find your way back to the site's main page if you get lost?
   • Does the site make appropriate use of graphics, or do graphics interfere with the site's readability or add significantly to the pages' load times?
   • Do the pages include their last revision date, author and author's email address?
   • Does the site provide a general "search" link to allow for keyword searching of its contents?

6. Access

   • Is the site reliably available? Are planned outage periods announced in advance?
   • Does the site require membership or fees to access its content?
   • Does the site require particular software (plug-ins, readers, etc.) to access its content?