Evaluating the Quality of Health Web Sites: Developing a Validation Method and Rating Instrument

Abstract

Within the field of consumer health informatics there is a need to develop transparent validation methods and rating instruments both of sufficient complexity and reliability to help designers, evaluators and patients to evaluate the quality of health web sites and health information on the Web. Further refinement and validation of the Bomba and Land Consumer Health Website Rating Index (v.1) was conducted. This paper reports on the validation approach utilised (a combination of the Delphi Technique and Sullivan's 5 step process) to produce version 2 of the Bomba and Land Index.