Evaluating Health Information

Evaluating Health Information

The Internet can be a great source of health information but some online sources can be inaccurate, out-of-date or confusing. Use these resources to help you evaluate the information you find.

• Evaluation Checklist. Ask yourself the following questions to determine if the health information on the website is reliable.
  •  Who? Who runs the website?  Are they qualified to talk about the subject?
  •  What? What does the website say? Are facts presented instead of opinions?  Are claims realistic?
  •  Where? Where did the information come from? Is the author clearly identified?  Are reliable sources of information shown?
  •  When? Is information up-to-date?
  •  Why? Why does the website exist?  Are they trying to education you instead of sell to you?
• This tutorial from the National Library of Medicine teaches you how to evaluate health information you find on the Internet.

Is it online news or advertising?

To sell products online advertisers are creating articles and fake news items that appear to be educating you.   Instead, their purpose is to sell you a product.  This checklist from the National Centre for Complimentary and Integrative Health can help you tell the difference between a real and a fake news item.  

A news site may be fake if it:

• Endorses a product. Real news organizations generally don't do this.
• Only quotes people who say good things about the product.
• Presents research findings that seem too good to be true. (If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.)
• Contains links to a sales site.
• Includes positive reader comments only, and you can't add a comment of your own.

Always discuss health products and treatments with your health care team before you use them.

Evaluating Health Information in Social Media

*Adopted from the National Centre for Complimentary and Integrative Health 

Evaluate the sponsor's website

• Health information presented on social networking sites is often brief, and details about the      sponsoring organization may be limited. Fortunately, many organizations with social media accounts have websites, where they discuss the health topics in greater detail.  You can usually find a link to the website in the organization's profile on the social networking site. On Twitter, the link is usually in the header above the tweets; on Facebook, it's usually in the "About" section. When you can visit the website evaluate it using the check list at the top of this page.

Make sure the social media account is real using one or more of the following:

• Some social networking sites have symbols that indicate that an account has been verified. For example, Twitter uses a white check mark in the middle of a blue cloud.  This appears next to the name on an account's profile, and next to the account name in the search results. The symbol is always the same color and placed in the same location. 
• Go to the organization's website and look for a link to their social networking site. That link should take you to the organization's real account.
• In the Twitter biography or Facebook "About" section, many organizations state "the official Facebook/Twitter page of [name of organization]."