Fidélité d'une grille d'évaluation de sites Internet de formation médicale.

Context: The mass of available medical training programs on the Internet raises questions about the uniformity of the quality of information, the reliability and the sources of the medical information found on these sites. Objectives: Developing and then assessing the accuracy of an assessment checklist of medical education websites in view of providing to the international French-speaking medical community a useful, reliable and innovative tool. Method: An assessment checklist of 54 indicators grouped into five categories was developed. The accuracy of the checklist's overall score was compared using the results of seven observers who evaluated the same 16 websites twice. The second evaluation of the sites was carried out one year later one to minimize the risk of observers remembering their original evaluation. The data collection plan helped measure the following accuracy elements: intra-observer variability, inter-observer variability and site-observer interaction. The accuracy of the checklist score was measured by the intra-class correlation coefficient. Results: The resulting intra-class correlation coefficient was 0.684, consistent with a good degree of accuracy. Intra-observer variability (repeatability) was the largest source of variation attributable to the measuring method with 21% of total variation. Another performance measure was also used: the discrimination ratio that considers the number of different categories that can be recognized by a measurement system. The resulting ratio was 2.3, indicating that the checklist helps divide the sites identified in two categories: weak and average. Conclusion: Due to its high degree of accuracy, the assessment checklist of medical education websites is an interesting tool to assess the quality of these sites. The analysis clearly demonstrates that the best avenue in improving the reliability of the checklist would be to improve repeatability (intra-observer variability). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]