Abstract
Objective: As the Internet is a ubiquitous resource for information, we aimed to replicate a patient's Google search to identify and assess the quality of online mental health/wellbeing materials available to support women living with or beyond cancer.
Methods: A Google search was performed using a key term search strategy including search strings ‘cancer’, ‘wellbeing’, ‘distress’ and ‘resources’ to identify online resources of diverse formats (i.e., factsheet, website, program, course, video, webinar, e-book, podcast). The quality evaluation scoring tool (QUEST) was used to analyse the quality of health information provided.
Results: The search strategy resulted in 283 resources, 117 of which met inclusion criteria across four countries: Australia, USA, UK, and Canada. Websites and factsheets were primarily retrieved. The average QUEST score was 10.04 (highest possible score is 28), indicating low quality, with 92.31% of resources lacking references to sources of information.
Conclusions: Our data indicated a lack of evidence-based support resources and engaging information available online for people living with or beyond cancer. The majority of online resources were non-specific to breast cancer and lacked authorship and attribution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e6337 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Psycho-Oncology |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2024 |
Keywords
- cancer
- eHealth
- Internet
- mental health
- oncology
- online
- support
- survivorship
- wellbeing
