A reliability and content analysis of Italian language anorexia nervosa-related websites

Figures & data

Table 1 Search strategy adopted in the current study for selecting relevant anorexia nervosa-related website pages

Search strategy item	Search strategy details
Search engines	Google, Yahoo, Virgilio, MSN, Ask, Ixquick, Iasse
Used keywords	Anoressia, anoressia nervosa (Italian, anorexia, anorexia nervosa)
Time filter	December 2014
Language filter	Italian
Inclusion criteria	Pertinent to the eating disorder “anorexia nervosa,” appearing among the first 100 results returned by the search engine

Figure 1 Flow-chart adopted in the current study.

Table 2 Compliance of the anorexia nervosa-related website pages included in the current study to the items of the HonCode certification mark and statistical significance

HONcode item	Yes	No	Statistical significance
Authority	137 (34.08%)	265 (65.92%)	P<0.0001
Complementarity	346 (86.07%)	56 (13.93%)	P<0.0001
Confidentiality	228 (56.72%)	174 (43.28%)	ns
Sources/date of information	118 (29.35%)	284 (70.65%)	P<0.0001
Justifiability	63 (15.67%)	339 (84.33%)	P<0.0001
Webmaster/additional contact	175 (43.53%)	227 (56.47%)	ns
Sponsor	93 (23.13%)	309 (76.87%)	P<0.0001
Advertising policy/policy	88 (21.89%)	314 (78.11%)	P<0.0001

Abbreviation: ns, not statistically significant.

Figure 2 Cluster analysis of all the anorexia nervosa-related website pages included in this study. Factor 1 (treatment), factor 2 (vomiting), factor 3 (onset-age), and factor 4 (weight).

Table 3 The main emerging themes/topics from the content analysis of the included anorexia nervosa-related website pages

Theme/topic	% variance	Frequency
Treatment/behavioral-cognitive therapy	1.13	393 (97.76%)
Physical self-acceptance	0.79	233 (57.96%)
Food	0.87	222 (55.22%)
Family conflict	1.07	188 (46.77%)
Elimination	1.44	181 (45.02%)
Abuse	1.35	176 (43.78%)
Body image	1.00	166 (41.29%)
Pain and symptoms	1.12	163 (40.55%)
Onset and possible causes	0.96	162 (40.30%)
Feelings and emotions	0.82	157 (39.05%)
Battles and efforts/conflicts	0.87	154 (38.31%)
Self-esteem	1.64	150 (37.31%)
Pro-ana blog/forum	0.75	147 (36.57%)
Family	0.95	147 (36.57%)
Bulimia	1.01	144 (35.82%)
Diagnosis	1.02	140 (34.83%)
Disorder	0.81	134 (33.33%)
Common saying/prejudice	0.93	121 (30.10%)
Relapse	1.19	112 (27.86%)
Depression/anxiety	0.71	99 (24.63%)
Adulthood	1.98	99 (24.63%)
Becoming anorexic	0.85	98 (24.38%)
Amenorrhea	1.07	96 (23.88%)
Gender	1.04	59 (14.68%)
Excess	0.92	53 (13.18%)
Waiting/patience	0.73	52 (12.94%)
Being excessively slim	0.92	40 (9.95%)
Guilt	0.87	35 (8.71%)
Colors	0.81	34 (8.46%)
Behaviors and meanings	0.75	19 (4.73%)