How the guidelines were produced

Research activities

The research was carried out by the Project Officer, Sue Childs, IMRI.

It consisted of six stages.

1. Collecting background information, by:

• a review of the literature on quality issues and health information on the Internet;



• a review of quality guidelines, and how they could be used to assess voluntary sector Web sites.

2. Obtaining health consumers' views on quality issues and concerns about health information on the Internet and any help they needed, by:

• a postal questionnaire survey of health consumers;



• focus groups with health consumers and support group members and workers.

3. Writing the guidelines, by:

• using the information gained from the first two stages.

4. Piloting the guidelines, by:

• making them available as a basic Web site;



• individual health consumers using the consumer guidelines with the Project Officer and making comments;



• individual support groups, who were setting up a Web site, using the support group guidelines with the Project Officer and making comments;



• asking for comments from organisations and professionals active in health information provision.

5. Developing a Web site to disseminate the guidelines, by:

• collaborating with Kay Humphrey from the Centre for Health Information Quality. Kay designed, tested and set up the site;



• designing a simple, accessible, usable Web site;



• testing the site against a wide range of accessibility guidelines;



• setting up a free-access site with its own domain name.

6. Publicising the Web site, by:

• sending details to a wide range of organisations;



• officially launching the guidelines with press releases;



• submitting the Web site to search engines and gateways.

Publications produced

The project has resulted in a number of published journal articles:

• Childs S (2005). Judging the quality of Internet-based health information. Performance Measurement and Metrics, 6(2):80-96



• Childs S (2004). Developing health web site quality assessment guidelines for the voluntary sector: Outcomes from the Judge project. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 21(Suppl 2):14-26

© Copyright for this site is held by Contact a Family and the Information Society Research and Consultancy Group, School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University. Site published February 2003. Last updated October 2006. Review date October 2007.