Evaluating Health Information on the Internet
Not everything you see on the internet is legitimate! Learn how to evaluate the information you find in order to make informed choices.
There is no shortage of health and health-related information available on the internet. The challenge for consumers of health information is to locate the best sources to answer their questions. It can easily become overwhelming to sift through thousands of web pages and to have to deal with conflicting, dubious, and even downright dangerous information!
The health information you'll find in this website has been checked and double-checked by Health Sciences Library information professionals, so you can be assured it's of good quality. But what about pages you find on your own? Obviously, we can't link to every site from our page, so instead, we'd rather arm you with the tools you need to evaluate websites on your own.
These links provide lists of questions you can ask yourself about as well as things to look for on the website in question, in order to determine its legitimacy and reliability.
- Evaluating the Credibility of Health Websites: Can You Trust Dr. Google?This is a really helpful one-page, printable guide to help you make decisions about the quality of a website. It includes a handy list of red flags and why you should be mindful of them.
- MLA For Health Consumers and Patients: Find Good Health InformationThe Medical Library Association offers this guide to smart searching in order to filter results for your health-related topic as well as information on how to evaluate what you find.
For more information about systematic evaluation of websites and other internet resources, see the next heading in this list Evaluating Information: The CRAAP Test
