Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking
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Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw · Apr 2014
The quality of mental health information commonly searched for on the Internet.
Previous research has reviewed the quality of online information related to specific mental disorders. Yet, no comprehensive study has been conducted on the overall quality of mental health information searched for online. This study examined the first 20 search results of two popular search engines-Google and Bing-for 11 common mental health terms. ⋯ The presence of the HONCode badge and noncommercial status was found to have a small correlation with Web site quality, and Web sites displaying the HONCode badge and commercial sites had lower readability scores. Popular search engines appear to offer generally reliable results pointing to mostly good or better quality mental health Web sites. However, additional work is needed to make these sites more readable.