Research on health information quality evaluation indicators for mobile social media based on user perception

Unreliable health information on social media negatively impacts public health decisions. The prevalence of health-related content on mobile social media platforms has elevated information quality to a critical public health concern. However, the peculiarities of social media are not taken into consideration by conventional methods and criteria used to evaluate health-related content in the public domain. This study try to examining what consumers value and expect from the quality of health information on mobile social media, and build a model for evaluating the quality of health information on these platforms. We have identified a list of health information quality indicators for mobile social media from existing tools and literature, and based on this, designed a questionnaire survey for mobile social media users. The importance of the indicators was ranked based on user suggestion, and hierarchical clustering analysis was used to identify the dimensions of indicator classification. Based on clustering analysis and professional practice, we propose organizing mobile social media health information quality indicators into five dimensions, include relevance, timeliness, credibility, and professional value of health information content. Subgroup analysis shows no statistical difference in authentication, objectivity, author transparency, reference source, and readability due to demographics. Users from different groups have consistent recognition of the importance of evaluation indicators such as navigation, personalized recommendation, content relevance, no advertising, content focus, and universality of health programs. However, there are significant differences in multimedia richness among different user groups for evaluation indicators. We have identified evaluation indicators for the quality of health information on mobile social media and organized them by dimension. There are partial differences in the perception of evaluation indicators among different user groups. Therefore, the optimization of health information quality in the future can be carried out targeted to different user groups.