203: The Use of Internet for Children's Health Information By Parents at a Canadian Tertiary Health Institution
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The use of the Internet to search for medical and health related information is increasing and associated with concerns around quality and safety. We investigated the current use and perceptions of reliable websites for children's health information by parents. The objectives of our study were to determine: Patterns of Internet use by parents for their child's health information Types of devices used to access information around child's health Perceived reliability of websites and cross-corroboration of information Future uses of Internet for child's health information Following institutional ethics approval we conducted a survey of 146 parents/guardians of children presenting for day surgery with a 95% CI and 8% margin of error. A 20-item survey instrument developed and tested by the investigators was administered. Consent for participation in the study was implied by completion of the survey. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. The majority (143 of 146 [98%]) of parents/guardians used the Internet to search for information around their child's health. Eighty percent of respondents reported using public search engines as their first resource while less than 20% used university/hospital based websites (Figure 1). Common conditions such as colds/flu, skin conditions and fever were the most frequently searched and unique conditions directly affecting the child were second (Figure 2). Despite low usage levels of university/hospital based websites for child's health information, the majority of parents/guardians (74%) regarded these as providing safe, accurate and reliable information. In contrast, only 24% of respondents regarded public search engines as providing safe and reliable information. Interestingly 50% of parents/guardians cross-checked information found on the internet with the family physician. An unprecedented majority of parents/guardians are using the internet for their child's health information. Of concern is that parents/guardians are currently not using reliable and safe sources of information. Health care providers should begin to focus on improving access to safe, accurate and reliable information for parents and guardians through various modalities including education, design for multiplatform and incorporation of ‘safe seals’ and better search engine optimization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".