Did online publishers "get it right"? Using a naturalistic search strategy to review cognitive health promotion content on internet webpages.

BACKGROUND: One of the most common uses of the Internet is to search for health-related information. Although scientific evidence pertaining to cognitive health promotion has expanded rapidly in recent years, it is unclear how much of this information has been made available to Internet users. Thus, the purpose of our study was to assess the reliability and quality of information about cognitive health promotion encountered by typical Internet users. METHODS: To generate a list of relevant search terms employed by Internet users, we entered seed search terms in Google Trends and recorded any terms consistently used in the prior 2 years. To further approximate the behaviour of typical Internet users, we entered each term in Google and sampled the first two relevant results. This search, completed in October 2014, resulted in a sample of 86 webpages, 48 of which had content related to cognitive health promotion. An interdisciplinary team rated the information reliability and quality of these webpages using a standardized measure. RESULTS: We found that information reliability and quality were moderate, on average. Just one retrieved page mentioned best practice, national recommendations, or consensus guidelines by name. Commercial content (i.e., product promotion, advertising content, or non-commercial) was associated with differences in reliability and quality, with product promoter webpages having the lowest mean reliability and quality ratings. CONCLUSIONS: As efforts to communicate the association between lifestyle and cognitive health continue to expand, we offer these results as a baseline assessment of the reliability and quality of cognitive health promotion on the Internet.

Efficacy of screen-capture tutorials in literature search training: a pilot study of a research method.

This pilot study evaluated a research method for examining the efficacy of screen capture tutorials in teaching database search skills. This is not a results-oriented paper but rather describes the facets and testing of a mixed methods protocol. The lessons learned can be applied to a result-oriented study with a larger sample size and to the development of methods for similar studies. The protocol tried to balance control of variables with observing behavior in the natural setting. A combination of concept maps, an information stage questionnaire, and screen recordings provided rich information about health practitioners' research questions and search strategies.