Quality of smoking cessation information on the Internet: a cross-sectional survey study

This study aimed to evaluate the quality of Internet information on smoking cessation using a cross-sectional survey design. The characteristics and content of 89 Web sites containing smoking cessation information were evaluated The quality of these sites were measured by the information quality tool (IQT), quality scale (QS) and DISCERN. The most widely reported types of information were the risks of smoking (65.2 per cent of sites) and nicotine replacement therapy (778 per cent of sites). Most (59.7 per cent) of the sites containing treatment information were evidence-based The Web sites were of variable quality and the quality of sites produced by non-commercial organisations (e.g. universities) was significantly higher than those produced by commercial organisations (e.g. pharmaceutical companies) and private practices. Sites containing some evidence-based information had significantly higher quality scores than sites containing no evidence-based information. These findings have implications for practice and further research and these are discussed in the paper.