Quality assessment of the Website for Eating Disorders: a systematic review of a pending challenge

Abstract

A Systematic review of articles from peer-reviewed journals was conducted, studying the complete texts in all cases. The key words selected were: "Eating Disorders" and "Internet." Descriptive analysis was performed on the variables selected, and Fisher's Exact test was used to analyze the presence of a linear relationship between qualitative variables. Of the 7 studies reviewed, 5 (71.42%) focused on content criteria and 2 (28.57%) examined both documentary and content criteria. Documentary quality was evaluated using two assessment instruments developed by two of the authors, comprising a set of 20 different variables, 5 of which were common to both studies (25% observed percentage agreement). Fisher's Exact test revealed significant differences between the two questionnaires (p = 0.049). Studies assessing Website content used 30 different topics to classify the subject matter, of which 6 were common to 2 studies. Although generic instruments for assessing the quality of Websites devoted to eating disorders were found, no validated questionnaire was found. This research did not locate any checklist or simple tool which could be used by consumers of health information available on the Web.