Evaluating the quality of Covid-19 related information on the website of the Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education

Abstract

Objective (s): Limited health literacy is a common problem in many countries worldwide. In Iran, about half of Iranian has limited health literacy. They have problems in understanding health information and making healthy decisions in critical situations such as Covid-19 pandemic. Thus it is necessary to make health information understandable to intended audiences. This quantitative study aimed to evaluate the quality of Covid-19 related information appeared on the website of Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Methods: We searched the term covid-19 on the website of Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Once inter-coder reliability was established between two researchers, we evaluated the quality of each COvid-19 related information using the Clear Communication Index (CCI). Results: The mean CCI score for the evaluated information was 38.87 (SD = 9.72) none achieved a score higher than 90. The findings showed that the quality of included information were not desirable according to the criteria for designing instructional material for people with limited health literacy. In the subsections, the main message, the call to action for action and language were lower than expected. Adherence to information design, tips and behavioral recommendations was significantly higher than expected. Conclusion: To move toward a health literate public that is capable of combating epidemics such as Covid-19 pandemic there is a need to enhance the quality of information by using evaluation tools such as CCI.