QHII criteria for criteria

Quality of health information on the internet (QHII)
Health Website Ratings (HWR) project: Criteria for criteria

For purposes of the Health Website Ratings (HWR) project, the Institute developed the following criteria for criteria for evaluating the quality of health websites. Collectively, their use (in a rating tool) should result in the reliable and valid differentiation of a "credible" or "high quality" health website (as defined by the HWR project) from other health websites.

Criteria for rating health-oriented websites should be:

Potentially useful, and intelligible, to consumers
Operationalizable by information (that should be) displayed on the website to be rated; including, when applicable, the absence of information displayed on the website
Unambiguous and clearly worded; with definitions of all relevant terms, or reference to such definitions (eg, in a glossary)
Practical to apply by their intended user (consumers or qualified health professionals, as applicable); including implicitly or explicitly indicting how, and requiring only a reasonable length of time, to apply the criterion
Reliable (different raters or the same rater on different occasions) should reach the same conclusion when applying the criterion to the same information displayed on or absent from a website)
Applicable directly, or contribute indirectly, to the assessment of the quality of health-oriented websites within the specified scope of the rating instrument.