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Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study

BACKGROUND: Excess weight gain affects nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States and is a strong risk factor for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes, including long-term obesity. The Internet is a prominent source of information during pregnancy; however, the accuracy of this online inform...

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Autores principales: Chang, Tammy, Verma, Bianca A, Shull, Trevor, Moniz, Michelle H, Kohatsu, Lauren, Plegue, Melissa A, Collins-Thompson, Kevyn
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4840255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27056465
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5138
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author Chang, Tammy
Verma, Bianca A
Shull, Trevor
Moniz, Michelle H
Kohatsu, Lauren
Plegue, Melissa A
Collins-Thompson, Kevyn
author_facet Chang, Tammy
Verma, Bianca A
Shull, Trevor
Moniz, Michelle H
Kohatsu, Lauren
Plegue, Melissa A
Collins-Thompson, Kevyn
author_sort Chang, Tammy
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Excess weight gain affects nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States and is a strong risk factor for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes, including long-term obesity. The Internet is a prominent source of information during pregnancy; however, the accuracy of this online information is unknown. OBJECTIVE: To identify, characterize, and assess the accuracy of frequently accessed webpages containing information about weight gain during pregnancy. METHODS: A descriptive study was used to identify and search frequently used phrases related to weight gain during pregnancy on the Google search engine. The first 10 webpages of each query were characterized by type and then assessed for accuracy and completeness, as compared to Institute of Medicine guidelines, using crowdsourcing. RESULTS: A total of 114 queries were searched, yielding 305 unique webpages. Of these webpages, 181 (59.3%) included information regarding weight gain during pregnancy. Out of 181 webpages, 62 (34.3%) contained no specific recommendations, 48 (26.5%) contained accurate but incomplete recommendations, 41 (22.7%) contained complete and accurate recommendations, and 22 (12.2%) were inaccurate. Webpages were most commonly from for-profit websites (112/181, 61.9%), followed by government (19/181, 10.5%), medical organizations or associations (13/181, 7.2%), and news sites (12/181, 6.6%). The largest proportion of for-profit sites contained no specific recommendations (44/112, 39.3%). Among pages that provided inaccurate information (22/181, 12.2%), 68% (15/22) were from for-profit sites. CONCLUSIONS: For-profit websites dominate the online space with regard to weight gain during pregnancy and largely contain incomplete, inaccurate, or no specific recommendations. This represents a significant information gap regarding an important risk factor for obesity among mothers and infants. Our findings suggest that greater clinical and public health efforts to disseminate accurate information regarding healthy weight gain during pregnancy may help prevent significant morbidity and may support healthier pregnancies among at-risk women and children.
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spelling pubmed-48402552016-05-06 Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study Chang, Tammy Verma, Bianca A Shull, Trevor Moniz, Michelle H Kohatsu, Lauren Plegue, Melissa A Collins-Thompson, Kevyn J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: Excess weight gain affects nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States and is a strong risk factor for adverse maternal and fetal outcomes, including long-term obesity. The Internet is a prominent source of information during pregnancy; however, the accuracy of this online information is unknown. OBJECTIVE: To identify, characterize, and assess the accuracy of frequently accessed webpages containing information about weight gain during pregnancy. METHODS: A descriptive study was used to identify and search frequently used phrases related to weight gain during pregnancy on the Google search engine. The first 10 webpages of each query were characterized by type and then assessed for accuracy and completeness, as compared to Institute of Medicine guidelines, using crowdsourcing. RESULTS: A total of 114 queries were searched, yielding 305 unique webpages. Of these webpages, 181 (59.3%) included information regarding weight gain during pregnancy. Out of 181 webpages, 62 (34.3%) contained no specific recommendations, 48 (26.5%) contained accurate but incomplete recommendations, 41 (22.7%) contained complete and accurate recommendations, and 22 (12.2%) were inaccurate. Webpages were most commonly from for-profit websites (112/181, 61.9%), followed by government (19/181, 10.5%), medical organizations or associations (13/181, 7.2%), and news sites (12/181, 6.6%). The largest proportion of for-profit sites contained no specific recommendations (44/112, 39.3%). Among pages that provided inaccurate information (22/181, 12.2%), 68% (15/22) were from for-profit sites. CONCLUSIONS: For-profit websites dominate the online space with regard to weight gain during pregnancy and largely contain incomplete, inaccurate, or no specific recommendations. This represents a significant information gap regarding an important risk factor for obesity among mothers and infants. Our findings suggest that greater clinical and public health efforts to disseminate accurate information regarding healthy weight gain during pregnancy may help prevent significant morbidity and may support healthier pregnancies among at-risk women and children. JMIR Publications Inc. 2016-04-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4840255/ /pubmed/27056465 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5138 Text en ©Tammy Chang, Bianca A Verma, Trevor Shull, Michelle H Moniz, Lauren Kohatsu, Melissa A Plegue, Kevyn Collins-Thompson. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 07.04.2016. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Chang, Tammy
Verma, Bianca A
Shull, Trevor
Moniz, Michelle H
Kohatsu, Lauren
Plegue, Melissa A
Collins-Thompson, Kevyn
Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title_full Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title_fullStr Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title_full_unstemmed Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title_short Crowdsourcing and the Accuracy of Online Information Regarding Weight Gain in Pregnancy: A Descriptive Study
title_sort crowdsourcing and the accuracy of online information regarding weight gain in pregnancy: a descriptive study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4840255/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27056465
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.5138
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