QHII HWR project procedures

Quality of health information on the internet (QHII)
Health Website Ratings (HWR) project: Rating procedures

The Health Website Ratings (HWR) project utilizes the following methodology:

Ratings are based on the results of an instrument developed jointly by Health Improvement Institute (HII) and Consumer Reports WebWatch (CRW).
Websites to be rated are selected by CRW based on Institute developed criteria and Nielson web-traffic statistics.
The Institute divides websites to be rated into batches. A virtual "panel" of 3 Institute credentialed volunteer raters independently completed the instrument for each batch of websites. Some raters complete more than one batch. Raters are health professionals (but not necessarily medical practitioners). They assess websites over a 6-8 week period.
CRW staff score CRW credibility attributes (Part I of the HWRI). The Institute compares these scores to HII raters' assessments; CRW staff resolved any discrepancies.
Institute-credentialed raters assess all other website attributes. The Institute determines the rating panel's median score for each attribute. The website's overall score is calculated by weighting each applicable attribute score according to its importance (determined by raters' normalized median weight).
Ratings are scores converted to Consumer Reports "blobs." Narratives are a composite of raters' evaluations, edited by CRW/HII.

To read the detailed methodology used to rate each wave of ratings, visit the ratings website.