Quality, Reliability, Technical Quality, and Readability of Google Online Information on Childhood Glaucoma

Purpose: To evaluate the quality, reliability, technical quality, and readability of online information related to childhood glaucoma. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, no human sub-jects were studied. Analysis was done for online websites on childhood glaucoma. The terms "childhood glaucoma," "pediatric glaucoma," "congenital glaucoma," "buphthal-mos," and "big eyes" were entered into the Google search engine and the first 100 search results were assessed for quality, reliability, technical quality, and readability. Peer-reviewed articles, patient forum posts, dictionary defini-tions, and websites that appeared as targeted ads, were not in English, or were not focused on humans were ex-cluded. Each website was evaluated for (1) quality and re-liability using the DISCERN, HONcode, and JAMA criteria; (2) technical quality assessing 11 technical aspects; and (3) readability using six separate criteria (Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score and Grade Level, Gunning Fog Index score, the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Index, Cole-man-Liau Index, and Automated Readability Index).Results:The median scores for the DISCERN, HONcode, and JAMA criteria were 2.6 (range = 1 to 4.75; 1 = worst, 5 = best), 10 (range = 0 to 16; 0 = worst, 16 = best), and 2 (range = 0 to 4; 0 = worst, 4 = best), respectively. The median technical quality score was 0.7. Readabil-ity was poor among most websites, with a median Flesch-Kincaid grade Grade Level Score of 9.3. The me-dian Gunning Fog Index score was 9.8. There was a sta-tistically significantly higher JAMA score and Gunning Fog Index score among the private websites compared to the institutional websites. However, institutional websites had higher technical quality.Conclusions: Online information on childhood glau-coma had poor to moderate quality and reliability. The technical quality is good; however, most websites' read-ability was above the recommended 5th to 6th grade reading level.