Evaluating a Website for Credibility, Essay Example

Introduction

The website selected for evaluation is ‘Familydoctor.org’ and this website gives information that is related to the topics of health and wellbeing. The domain of this website is ‘.org’ which means that this website is operated through an organization. The core purpose of this website is that it gives the advice and information of wellness and health that is beneficial for all the family members. There are various search engines that are used for locating this websites such as Google and Yahoo. Anyone who wants to search for this site just need to time ‘Family Health’ in the search engine that will take us to this website. The rationale for selecting this website is that many people have families and they would want health related information. So, this website aims to help the family members and give them professional advice related to their wellbeing. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or the website address is denoted by Http and is ‘http://familydoctor.org/familydoctor/en.html’.

Analysis of the website using 5 criteria

Authority

This websites gives the information from the medical students, physicians practicing family care and residents of family practice. The information written on this website is approved and written by professional physicians and educators. These professionals have expertise in patient education and family practice. The affiliates found on the website of familydoctor.org comprises of all the educators and doctors who are responsible for the information that is put in the website (Familydoctor.org). Moreover, this website information is first gone through the editorial board. The board first reviews the content and then send it for quality assurance of the information to the physician. After that the information is place on the website.

Information

The information that is found on the website is first gone through the evaluation and critique process before it is finalized to be included in the website. The format of this information is written in such as style which is understandable by all regardless of the level of education.

Ease of Navigation

The website is easy to use and there are different tabs and links related to various group such as for kids, teens and seniors. The graphics and the layout of the website is attractive and there is a slideshow which summarizes the important aspects of this website. The website has separate links for drug information, healthcare information and health related tools. The information on the website is easily accessible and can be directly accessed.

Objectivity

The information provided on this website is not objective. The reason is that the website has many sister and partner sites. The objectives of this website is to help the members of the family by providing them accurate and authentic information related to the health and wellness. The website is quite descriptive as it has different variety of topics related to wellness, pregnancy, disease conditions etc.

Security and Privacy policies

Family doctor adopted the best practices of nursing and clinical practices. There is a link on the website ‘Daily update’ which means that the website is regularly monitored which makes it more secure and credible (Li, 2012). The website also gives both the present and the past news which goes back to a month. There is also a tab of ‘Contact us’ which makes this website more credible as it has a physical office present and a customer service phone number for catering to specific questions. The website is not biased and is accessible worldwide. There is no option for login or using the guest access, so this website is not privately secured and is accessible to the general public (Familydoctor.org).

Empirical Evidence supporting website evaluation

Family doctor website domains end with .org which makes it a very well-known organization because it is an authority’s website (Li, 2012). There are daily updates on the website and the information is accurate and reliable. This information is reviewed for quality and also by professionals in healthcare. The graphics of the site are loaded very swiftly and all of its links are operational. As far as the security and the privacy are concerned, this is not the issue as the website is just for simple searching (Huang, 2014). There is no membership of sign in required.

Application of Website in nursing practice

The website is very crucial for the practice in nursing as it recommend the best practices of clinics. Incorporating the clinical practices that are best into the baccalaureate of the nursing critical case is essential. The websites promote higher quality care with the use of care concepts, interventions and the techniques that aid in the research (Li, 2012).  This website adopts the best practices in the setting of healthcare to support the general public and set a standard of healthcare. In short, this website maintains the nurse’s knowledge, skills and practice in the form of information and is the best guided available evidence.

Conclusion

To sum up, the introduction of the Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) has improved the cost effectiveness, efficiency and quality of the deliverance of healthcare. The application of the information technology in the settings of health care has played an essential role in the accessibility of the information. As we can see in the case of our selected website ‘Familydoctor.org’, we can see that the family members and the general public can access the information easily. The can care for their wellness and health by just accessing the website and reading the information. In short, it can be said that the credibility of the websites can be judged by five criteria and the websites falling in the domain name of ‘.gov’ and ‘.org’ are more credible.

Work Cited

Familydoctor.org,. ‘Health Education | Illnesses, Diseases & Conditions’. N.p., 2015. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Huang, Zhao, and Morad Benyoucef. “Usability and credibility of e-government websites.” Government Information Quarterly 31.4 (2014): 584-595.

Li, Xiaoqiang, et al. “A Novel System for Evaluating Website Using Link Analysis.” Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), 2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on. IEEE, 2012.