Quality Assessment of Persian Educational Websites for Pregnant Mothers: A Descriptive Study

Raising awareness among pregnant mothers and their participation in self-care can reduce the complications and risks of pregnancy. One of the ways to acquire information for pregnant women is through the Internet and websites. The purpose of this study was to determine the quality of Persian educational websites for pregnant mothers. This was a descriptive survey study. The study population consisted of Persian educational websites for pregnant mothers. Sampling method was Available websites. The first 5 pages of two common search Engines, Google & yahoo, were searched using the keywords “pregnancy” & “education website”. A total of 20 out of 86 websites matched the criteria and were included in the study. The data collection tool was the standard Checklist WebMedQual assessment tool created by Provost in 2006. The validity and reliability of this tool was verified in its original version and then in the localized version based on the frameworks of the template websites in previous studies. The websites were directly observed and evaluated by 9 trained experts in January 2017. The agreement coefficient between the two checklists was completed in groups based on Kappa 0.78 coefficient. The websites were evaluated based on information content indexes, resource validity, design, availability, usability, links, user support and information confidentiality, with the scores ranging from 0 to 85, and the ideal score was considered 60. SPSS 16 was used for data analysis and using one-sample t-test the results were presented as mean score and optimal score. The findings showed a significant difference between the average availability and utilization index of the websites under study (P<0.001), and the mean score (6.2±0.61) was higher than the average score (4.5). Persian websites were less favored in the criteria of content, validity, design, links and support, and their ratings were lower than the average rating of the study. Also, none of the reviewed websites received the total score. Persian websites for pregnancy education are not high in quality. Therefore, pregnant mothers need to seek guidance from specialist doctors and midwives. Website administrators are also advised to consider website evaluation criteria and improve their websites.