The Impact of Inaccurate Internet Health Information in a Secondary School Learning Environment
The Impact of Inaccurate Internet Health Information in a Secondary School Learning Environment
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DOI：
10.2196/jmir.986
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发表时间：
2008-01-01
影响因子：
7.4
通讯作者：
Richards-Kortum, Rebecca
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kortum, Philip;Edwards, Christine;Richards-Kortum, Rebecca
背景：美国患者普遍使用互联网获取健康信息。虽然互联网上提供了大量与健康相关的信息，但这些信息的准确性差异很大。 目的：本研究的目的是确定学生在使用简单的关键词搜索收集有关有争议的医学主题的信息时，如何有效地评估基于互联网的材料的准确性。方法：来自德克萨斯州休斯顿科学磁石高中的 34 名学生使用 Google 搜索术语“疫苗安全”和“疫苗危险”，然后回答有关返回网站上健康信息准确性的问题。学生们还被要求描述他们在练习中学到的教训，并回答有关疫苗接种的七种陈述的证据强度的问题。由于令人惊讶的是，大多数学生在练习中留下了有关疫苗安全性和有效性的不准确信息，因此这些学生参加了一项后续研究，其中播放了基于事实的疫苗视频，之后重复了对学生知识的评估。结果：在 34 名参与者中，20 名 (59%) 认为互联网网站总体上是准确的，尽管学生查看的链接中有一半以上（40 名中的 22 名，55%）是，事实上，总体上来说是不准确的。很大一部分学生在第一次练习结束时对疫苗有严重的误解； 34 名参与者中有 18 名 (53%) 报告了他们所学到的教训中有关疫苗的不准确陈述。参与者在其经验教训陈述中报告的 41 个有关疫苗的可验证事实中，其中 24 个 (59%) 是不正确的。影片放映后，大多数学生根据他们的经验教训陈述，在练习中留下了有关疫苗的正确信息。在这个案例中，31 名参与者中有 29 名（94%）报告了有关疫苗的准确信息。在参与者报告的 49 个有关疫苗的可验证事实中，只有 2 个 (4%) 是不正确的。观看视频后，学生在“证据强度”练习中的正确分数也较高。结论：应谨慎对待允许学生使用互联网获取有关医学主题的信息，因为学生可能会带走主要不正确的信息。重要的是要用可靠、明确的信息来跟进相互矛盾的信息，传达讲师认为最重要的课程。最终的信息应该以事实为基础，但可能需要包含轶事成分，以对抗不准确的互联网网站经常传递的强烈情绪信息。
Background: Patients in the United States commonly use the Internet to acquire health information. While a significant amount of health-related information is available on the Internet, the accuracy of this information is highly variable.Objectives: The objective of the study was to determine how effectively students can assess the accuracy of Internet-based material when gathering information on a controversial medical topic using simple keyword searches.Methods: A group of 34 students from the science magnet high school in Houston, Texas searched for the terms "vaccine safety" and "vaccine danger" using Google and then answered questions regarding the accuracy of the health information on the returned sites. The students were also asked to describe the lessons they learned in the exercise and to answer questions regarding the strength of evidence for seven statements regarding vaccinations. Because of the surprising revelation that the majority of students left the exercise with inaccurate information concerning the safety and efficacy of vaccines, these same students participated in a follow-up study in which a fact-based vaccine video was shown, after which the assessment of student knowledge was repeated.Results: Of the 34 participants, 20 (59%) thought that the Internet sites were accurate on the whole, even though over half of the links (22 out of 40, 55%) that the students viewed were, in fact, inaccurate on the whole. A high percentage of the students left the first exercise with significant misconceptions about vaccines; 18 of the 34 participants (53%) reported inaccurate statements about vaccines in the lessons they learned. Of the 41 verifiable facts about vaccines that were reported by participants in their lessons-learned statement, 24 of those facts (59%) were incorrect. Following presentation of the film, the majority of students left the exercise with correct information about vaccines, based on their lessons-learned statement. In this case, 29 of the 31 participants (94%) reported accurate information about vaccines. Of the 49 verifiable facts about vaccines that were reported by participants, only 2 (4%) were incorrect. Students had higher correct scores in the "strength of evidence" exercise following exposure to the video as well.Conclusions: Allowing students to use the Internet to gain information about medical topics should be approached with care since students may take away predominantly incorrect information. It is important to follow up conflicting information with a solid, unambiguous message that communicates those lessons that the instructor deems most important. This final message should be fact based but may need to contain an anecdotal component to counter the strong emotional message that is often delivered by inaccurate Internet sites.