A quality assessment of Internet information regarding accelerated orthodontics
Article Category: research-article
Publié en ligne: 01 oct. 2021
Pages: 265 - 272
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/aoj-2021.029
© 2021 Kevser Kurt Demirsoy et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Objective
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the quality of information uploaded onto the Internet regarding accelerated orthodontics.
Materials and methods
The selected search terms ‘accelerated orthodontics’, ‘rapid orthodontics’, ‘speed orthodontics’, ‘rapid braces’, and ‘speed braces’ were searched by three commonly used search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and the URLs of the top 50 websites were recorded. The websites were evaluated using DISCERN, HONcode, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark instruments. The readability of the websites was evaluated by the Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL).
Results
The total mean DISCERN score (section 1 + section 2) for all websites was 29.50/75 (range: 15–68). The average FRES of all websites was 52.99 ± 31.91. Also, the average FKGL score of all websites was 10.73 ± 2.03. Professional health organisation websites had significantly higher DISCERN scores than other websites (
Conclusions
Information regarding accelerated orthodontics found on the Internet is insufficient. It is recommended that orthodontic societies and orthodontists increase the quality of the websites which describe accelerated orthodontics.