Citation

Sorenson SB, Shi R, Zhang J, Xue J. Am. J. Public Health 2014; 104(4): 702-707.

Affiliation

Susan B. Sorenson and Jia Xue are with the School of Social Policy and Practice and Rui Shi and Jingwen Zhang are with the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. All authors are also with the Evelyn Jacobs Ortner Center on Family Violence, University of Pennsylvania.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, American Public Health Association)

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2013.301629

PMID

24524489

Abstract

Objectives. We examined the content and usability of the Web sites of agencies serving women victims of violence. Methods. We entered the names of a systematic 10% sample of 3774 agencies listed in 2 national directories into a search engine. We took (in April 2012) and analyzed screenshots of the 261 resulting home pages and the readability of 193 home and first-level pages. Results. Victims (94%) and donors (68%) were the primary intended audiences. About one half used social media and one third provided cues to action. Almost all (96.4%) of the Web pages were rated "fairly difficult" to "very confusing" to read, and 81.4% required more than a ninth-grade education to understand. Conclusions. The service and marketing functions were met fairly well by the agency home pages, but usability (particularly readability and offer of a mobile version) and efforts to increase user safety could be improved. Internet technologies are an essential platform for public health. They are particularly useful for reaching people with stigmatized health conditions because of the anonymity allowed. The one third of agencies that lack a Web site will not reach the substantial portion of the population that uses the Internet to find health information and other resources. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print February 13, 2014: e1-e6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301629).

Language: en