Professional Experience Placement

A study recently published by Rowley, Johnson and Sbaffi (2014) explored the formation of trust judgements by students when seeking health information on the Internet. The study was conducted in the United Kingdom and used survey approach.  The authors developed their own tool to measure the dimension of the issue. The authors found there were a range of factors that contributed and influenced trust judgements. These were:

• Credibility;
• Content;
• Style;
• Usefulness; and
• Brand.

Recommendation was the least important factor. Within these factors reliability; information quality; facts rather than opinion; accuracy; and believability were also considered to be highly important. Conversely, factors of low importance were recommendations from the social network community; whether the information was tailored to them personally; the speed with which they found the information; access to hyperlinks on other web pages; and recommendations from other users of the site.

The authors found their study supported the literature where the link between trust and credibility is confused. Accuracy and reliability of content are key contributors to the development of perceptions of trust. Content and design of the site are also important because students perceive a professional look, ease of use and relevance also contributed to the concept of credibility. Brand indicators and reputation such as logos and URLs are essential signifiers of quality. Rowley, Johnson and Sbaffi (2014) provide a list of recommendations for further research to gain a broader understanding of how trust formation is developed.

There are implications for clinical supervision because students are keen to learn and will use the internet to find information that will augment their learning while in the professional experience environment.  Clinical supervisors can guide students in learning how to determine and also towards identifying and using appropriate and credible sites.  It is important the supervisors have an understanding of the range of information available to students and can discern credible sites for themselves, especially if the search is undertaken together with the student.

If you have any comments or suggestions about how to discern credible web-based health information sites, you are welcome to post them here. Join us @PEPCommunity.