Quality and usability assessment for health information websites: Can commonly used evaluation criteria be appropriately applied to assess Chinese-language websites?

Abstract

Healthcare websites must be evaluated for quality of content and usability by the target population because they are influential in healthcare decision-making. Many criteria have been developed to assess the quality and usability of health related websites. Nevertheless, most of these criteria are established from English language environment. Information technology is being developed and used by diverse groups of people, including users with different language background. We would like to discuss whether common criteria developed for English language web pages could assess the Chinese language internet environment. Quality and usability assessment criteria will be extracted and summarized by systematic reference search. Afterwards, language expert will evaluate the appropriateness of selected criteria on evaluating Chinese language websites. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.