Assessing the quality of Nutrition & Diet Therapy Websites according to appearance and content criteria

Nutrition and diet therapy Websites provide a set of health information for users and have a potential ability to improve health and personal hygiene. So, examining the websites according to appearance and content quality criteria is an important matter. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to evaluate the quality of nutrition and diet therapy Websites according to appearance and content criteria. The present study used a survey method with a descriptive approach to evaluate the quality of 38 nutrition and diet therapy websites.These websites were selected through searching yahoo, Google and Ministry of Health and Medical education website and some Persian subject directories like linesman, 1000 link, Irindex. Data were collected using a researcher-made checklist and consisted of two part including appearance (7 categories and 31 items) and content (5 categories and 11 items) criteria. Finally, data were analyzed using SPSS20 using descriptive indicator of mean. The results showed that in total from maximum score related to evaluating criteria (weighted mean = 48.18), “your doctor” website (weighted mean = 44) has the highest accommodation with the checklist and "fruits" website (weighted mean = 14) has the lowest accommodation. Result showed that most of the websites had not a suitable quality according to the content and appearance criteria. As a result, the website managers must apply the appearance criteria on their websites, try to generate more qualitative information based on the content criteria on their websites.