Documental Quality of Websites Concerning Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Sedentarism Available on the Internet

Abstract

Objectives: To analyze the documental quality of 389 websites in Portuguese about physical activity, healthy lifestyles and sedentary lifestyles found on the Brazilian version of the general search engine Google . Methods: The documental quality of the 389 websites was estimated based upon the following parameters: 1) a combination of quality criteria from the Health Information Locator (LIS—OPS/BIREME) and those from Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University, organized into 17 variables; 2) uniformity of reference criteria (Vancouver); 3) association between the presence of authorship and a higher number of the quality criteria being fulfilled. We also studied the ranking of the results presented by Google in addition to attributes connected to the websites’ target audience, the types of content, their sponsors and country of origin. Results: Of the 389 websites studied, 111 links were not active (28.53% CI 95% [24.05 - 33.02]) and none of the websites in the sample met all of the 17 quality variables. Authored websites displayed remarkable differences in quality when compared to those which did not identify their authors. Conclusions: Faced with the issue of the proliferation of websites with questionable quality content, and the fact that the ranking of results interferes directly in the internal evaluation of content relevance, we propose that public-health research institutions cooperate with web-searching developers to improve the website-positioning formula, in which the “identified authorship” criterion should play a major role in the ranking system.