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Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study
BACKGROUND: As representatives of health information communication platforms accessed through mobile phones and mobile terminals, health-related WeChat public accounts (HWPAs) have a large consumer base in the Chinese-speaking world. However, there is still a lack of general understanding of the sta...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
JMIR Publications
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7244997/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32383684 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14826 |
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author | Wang, Fuzhi Wang, Zhuoxin Sun, Weiwei Yang, Xiumu Bian, Zhiwei Shen, Lining Pan, Wei Liu, Peng Chen, Xingzhi Fu, Lianguo Zhang, Fan Luo, Dan |
author_facet | Wang, Fuzhi Wang, Zhuoxin Sun, Weiwei Yang, Xiumu Bian, Zhiwei Shen, Lining Pan, Wei Liu, Peng Chen, Xingzhi Fu, Lianguo Zhang, Fan Luo, Dan |
author_sort | Wang, Fuzhi |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: As representatives of health information communication platforms accessed through mobile phones and mobile terminals, health-related WeChat public accounts (HWPAs) have a large consumer base in the Chinese-speaking world. However, there is still a lack of general understanding of the status quo of HWPAs and the quality of the articles they release. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to assess the conformity of HWPAs to the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) and to evaluate the suitability of articles disseminated by HWPAs. METHODS: The survey was conducted from April 23 to May 5, 2019. Based on the monthly (March 1-31, 2019) WeChat Index provided by Qingbo Big Data, the top 100 HWPAs were examined to evaluate their HONcode compliance. The first four articles published by each HWPA on the survey dates were selected as samples to evaluate their suitability. All materials were assessed by three raters. The materials were assessed using the HONcode checklist and the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) score sheet. Data analysis was performed with SPSS version 17.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA) and Excel version 2013 (Microsoft Inc, Washington DC, USA). RESULTS: A total of 93 HWPAs and 210 of their released articles were included in this study. For six of the eight principles, the 93 HWPAs nearly consistently did not meet the requirements of the HONcode. The HWPAs certified by Tencent Corporation (66/93, 71%) were generally slightly superior to those without such certification (27/93, 29%) in terms of compliance with HONcode principles. The mean SAM score for the 210 articles was 67.72 (SD 10.930), which indicated “adequate” suitability. There was no significant difference between the SAM scores of the articles published by certified and uncertified HWPAs (P=.07), except in the literacy requirements dimension (t(df=97)=–2.418, P=.02). CONCLUSIONS: The HWPAs had low HONcode conformity. Although the suitability of health information released by HWPAs was at a moderate level, there were still problems identified, such as difficulty in tracing information sources, excessive implicit advertisements, and irregular usage of charts. In addition, the low approval requirements of HWPAs were not conducive to improvement of their service quality. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7244997 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | JMIR Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-72449972020-06-01 Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study Wang, Fuzhi Wang, Zhuoxin Sun, Weiwei Yang, Xiumu Bian, Zhiwei Shen, Lining Pan, Wei Liu, Peng Chen, Xingzhi Fu, Lianguo Zhang, Fan Luo, Dan JMIR Mhealth Uhealth Original Paper BACKGROUND: As representatives of health information communication platforms accessed through mobile phones and mobile terminals, health-related WeChat public accounts (HWPAs) have a large consumer base in the Chinese-speaking world. However, there is still a lack of general understanding of the status quo of HWPAs and the quality of the articles they release. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to assess the conformity of HWPAs to the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode) and to evaluate the suitability of articles disseminated by HWPAs. METHODS: The survey was conducted from April 23 to May 5, 2019. Based on the monthly (March 1-31, 2019) WeChat Index provided by Qingbo Big Data, the top 100 HWPAs were examined to evaluate their HONcode compliance. The first four articles published by each HWPA on the survey dates were selected as samples to evaluate their suitability. All materials were assessed by three raters. The materials were assessed using the HONcode checklist and the Suitability Assessment of Materials (SAM) score sheet. Data analysis was performed with SPSS version 17.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA) and Excel version 2013 (Microsoft Inc, Washington DC, USA). RESULTS: A total of 93 HWPAs and 210 of their released articles were included in this study. For six of the eight principles, the 93 HWPAs nearly consistently did not meet the requirements of the HONcode. The HWPAs certified by Tencent Corporation (66/93, 71%) were generally slightly superior to those without such certification (27/93, 29%) in terms of compliance with HONcode principles. The mean SAM score for the 210 articles was 67.72 (SD 10.930), which indicated “adequate” suitability. There was no significant difference between the SAM scores of the articles published by certified and uncertified HWPAs (P=.07), except in the literacy requirements dimension (t(df=97)=–2.418, P=.02). CONCLUSIONS: The HWPAs had low HONcode conformity. Although the suitability of health information released by HWPAs was at a moderate level, there were still problems identified, such as difficulty in tracing information sources, excessive implicit advertisements, and irregular usage of charts. In addition, the low approval requirements of HWPAs were not conducive to improvement of their service quality. JMIR Publications 2020-05-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7244997/ /pubmed/32383684 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14826 Text en ©Fuzhi Wang, Zhuoxin Wang, Weiwei Sun, Xiumu Yang, Zhiwei Bian, Lining Shen, Wei Pan, Peng Liu, Xingzhi Chen, Lianguo Fu, Fan Zhang, Dan Luo. Originally published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth (http://mhealth.jmir.org), 08.05.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR mHealth and uHealth, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mhealth.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Wang, Fuzhi Wang, Zhuoxin Sun, Weiwei Yang, Xiumu Bian, Zhiwei Shen, Lining Pan, Wei Liu, Peng Chen, Xingzhi Fu, Lianguo Zhang, Fan Luo, Dan Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title | Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title_full | Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title_fullStr | Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title_full_unstemmed | Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title_short | Evaluating the Quality of Health-Related WeChat Public Accounts: Cross-Sectional Study |
title_sort | evaluating the quality of health-related wechat public accounts: cross-sectional study |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7244997/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32383684 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/14826 |
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