Quality and Readability of Online Information on Cerebral Palsy

Abstract Objective The aim of this study was to investigate the readability and reliability of online content related to cerebral palsy (CP) and to classify sites that contain quality and readable information. Method On April 30, 2022, the term “cerebral palsy” was searched on the Google search engine. The categories, quality, content, readability, Alexa rank values, and backlink numbers of the sites were analyzed. The Journal of American Medical Association score and HONcode seal were used for quality assessment, and the Flesch–Kincaid grade (FKG) and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG) were used for readability assessment. Results Of the 155 sites, 46 had high-quality content. The quality of health portal and scientific publishing sites appeared to be high. The top 10 sites were determined to be of significantly higher quality (p = .017) than the remaining sites. The average readability values of the sites were not at the recommended level. Conclusion Despite the abundance of information available on CP-related websites, most of them were not of high quality. Additionally, many websites did not reach the recommended readability levels. Revision of existing online content related to CP and production of new high-quality content in line with readability recommendations is urgently required.