Internet as a Source of Public Health Information on Acupuncture for Pain Relief: Credibility Assessment and Readability Analysis.

Background: In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of patients seeking information from online health websites. As the information available on these websites can significantly impact the overall health of individuals in a society, it is vital for online health information to be presented in a manner that is readable and credible to the general public. To address this concern, the objective of the study was to examine and assess the credibility and readability of websites about acupuncture as a pain management approach.

Methods: The research population was represented by websites containing information about pain management using acupuncture found through Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines and with the keywords acupuncture and pain. The websites were evaluated in terms of confirming HON and JAMA criteria. FRE, GFI, FKGL, CLI, SMOG, and ARI indexes were used to assess their readability, and Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare the data.

Results: This study evaluated 52 websites that appeared on the first three pages of search engine results. Out of the 52 websites analyzed, 40 websites (76.9%) met the validity criteria set by JAMA, while only 21 websites (40.4%) were deemed valid based on the HONcode standards. According to the average readability index (12.38), the contents presented on the websites were at the Difficult to Read level. The mean readability scores of websites across various domains exhibit no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: The majority of websites that provide acupuncture-related information do meet the verification set by HONcode. Additionally, the scientific and educational content on these websites tends to be more complex than what is recommended by the AMA and NIH. This is concerning given the increasing popularity of online content and the impact it has on public health. Providers of this information must prioritize making it readable to a wide audience.