Quality and readability of online-based consumer health information about Metabolic Syndrome using DISCERN and Flesch-Kincaid Tools: An Evaluation Study

The Objective of our study was to evaluate the quality and readability of health information on the internet about Mets. The websites were gathered using keywords “Metabolic syndrome”, “Metabolic syndrome causes”, “Metabolic syndrome diagnosis”, “Metabolic syndrome prevention”, and “Metabolic syndrome management” on the search engine Google. Twenty-six unique websites were evaluated by five raters using validated tools. THE mean DISCERN score (out of 80) for all websites was 56.51 ± 7.50 suggesting ‘good’ quality. Websites with the .gov extension had the highest average DISCERN Score (62.5 ± 0.42). Out of the selected websites, nine websites had excellent quality. The mean FRES was 44.80 ± 11.50 and the mean FKGL was 10.90 ±2.17. The information available on the internet websites was difficult to read and can be comprehended by people achieving approximately US Grade 10.