LibGuides: Nursing 561: Evaluating Online Health Information

Evaluating Online Health Information

The following resources will help you learn about evaluating health information. In addition to learning modules, there are also checklists and questions available to help guide you through the process of thinking about the reliability of health information found online.

Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine
This tutorial teaches you how to evaluate the health information you find on the Internet, and includes a downloadable checklist of questions to help you decide if a website is trustworthy.

Checklists / Tools to Evaluate Websites

Health Information Quality Assessment Tools
This list is curated by OpenMD, and includes information about different health information assessment tools.

Criteria for Evaluating Websites
This PDF from a University of Washington health sciences librarian lists six questions to consider when assessing a website.

DISCERN Tool
The DISCERN tool can be found in the original published journal article. The Foley Library has access to this article in our collection.
QUality Evaluation Scoring Tool (QUEST)
This is a scored assessment tool to assess the quality of online health information using 6 questions. The tool can be found in the original published journal article, which is open access.
Critical Evaluation of Medical Claims (OpenMD)
This provides a list of questions to consider when evaluating the actual claims made in a journal article. This is condensed summary of a larger tutorial from the NCCIH (Questions to Help You Make Sense of Health Research).

Evaluating Health Information Checklist (MedlinePlus)
This short checklist was developed by the National Library of Medicine.

Evaluating an App

APA App Advisor
The App evaluation model from the American Psychological Association can be helpful in evaluating health apps.