Quality Assessment of Information About Pit and Fissure Sealants in Persian Websites in 2012

OBJECTIVES: Despite the increasing use of Internet, there is no supervision over the accuracy and quality of the information provided in the web. To deal with this problem, health specialists should take part in planning, publishing and supervision of online health-related information. The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality of information related to pit and fissure sealants in Persian websites. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, Persian websites providing information about fissure sealants were found using Google search engine. The searched keywords according to the MeSH database were “patient education” and “fissure sealant”. After applying the exclusion criteria, 37 websites out of 500 initial links remained in the study. These websites were evaluated based on a researcher-made checklist. The validity and reliability of the checklist were evaluated and confirmed. Descriptive analysis was applied to report the results of our study using SPSS version 11.5. RESULTS: The average score for the quality of information was 22.46 out of 38. The minimum scores were 16 and 30 and belonged to Pezeshkanemrooz.com and Asa85.blogfa.com , respectively. The results showed that 62.2% of the answers were scored 2–4 and 37.8% were scored 1; therefore, the overall quality of the published content was rated to be moderate for 62.2% and low for 37.8% of the websites. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the quality of information related to fissure sealant provided in Persian websites was good; however, the information given was mostly incomplete and could be improved. The main problems were doubtful credibility and outdated information.