Sexual health education: the untapped and unmeasured potential of US-based websites

ABSTRACT

With the exponential growth of online information seeking by young people, it is imperative for health and sexual health educators to consider online information a resource young people will pursue. Access to accurate and comprehensive sexual health information is important, yet there is a scarcity of research evaluating the quality of this information. Using youth-direct search terms, this study examined the quality of online information accessed with respect to usability and reliability. The top three US-based websites with the highest return rates were the US Centers for Disease Control, Planned Parenthood, and WebMD. Each of these websites was assessed using the Health Information Website Quality Assessment (HIWQA) to examine the quality of sexual health information provided. Results indicated that the reliability of sexual health information was highest on the CDC website while usability was highest on the Planned Parenthood and WebMD websites. These findings signal the variability of website quality and stress the need for websites that have both high usability and reliability when providing sexual health information.

KEYWORDS:

• Online
• sexual health information
• sexual health education
• sex education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

NMF and SBF gratefully acknowledge use of services and facilities supported in part by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the US National Institutes of Health under Award Number NIMHD (U54MD012393) to Florida International University Research Center in Minority Institutions. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health.