Running head: EVALUATING A WEBSITE FOR CREDIBILITY

Evaluating a Website for Credibility: National Institute of Health

James White
Chamberlain College of Nursing
NR 500: Foundational Concepts and Application
September 2014

Evaluating a Website for Credibility: National Institute of Health

The website that I chose to evaluate for credibility is the National Institute of Health
website. The purpose of this website is to:
Encourage[s] and depend[s] on public involvement in federally supported research and
activities. NIHs wide-ranging public efforts include outreach and education, nationwide
events, requests for public input on NIH projects, and special programs designed
specifically to involve public representatives in clinical research. (National Institute of
Health, 2014)
I utilized the Google search engine to find this website as I knew I wanted to evaluate the
National Institute of Health (NIH). The domain name for my choice is nih.com, while the URL
www.nih.gov. I chose NIH because they are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. (National Institute of Health, 2014) I also wanted to evaluate this website because

EVALUATING A WEBSITE FOR CREDIBILITY

NIH, as previously quoted above encourages public involvement in research and programs,
which I found very interesting.
Analysis of the Website
Analysis of a website needs to be thorough and cover many criteria to establish it a
reliable scholarly source of information. In the following section I will analyze the NIHs
website against many different criteria. I will need to establish the websites authority,
information, and objectivity; I will also be looking at the websites ease of navigation and their
privacy and security policies. All of this is needed to determine credibility for not only use as a
scholarly reference, but also for use as a source of information for the general public.
Authority
In order to determine authority of a website one needs to look into the author(s) of
selected information, the web host, and also when the information was last updated. (State
University of New York-Jefferson, 2014) When analyzing the NIH, if you go to the home page
one can easily find the editor, Carol Torgan, Ph.D., which when one looks her up finds that not
only is she the editor for NIH, but also contributes to many of their articles and has other articles
in other scholarly databases. Her information is posted clearly, along with her credentials. The
website itself is a subsidiary of the U.S Department of Health and Human Services.
Information
When looking at the information provided in the NIHs website, one can determine that
this information I frequently updated with the latest research. Not only does this website clearly
give you the date the article was published, but also gives you the date that the article was last
reviewed for currency. The information provided in the articles that I perused, clearly indicated
the author and if researched they were found to be experts in the fields they were writing about.

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The information was easily understood and verified as the articles themselves had references to
works used to write their own articles.
Objectivity
According to the University of Nevada- Reno (2014), in order to determine objectivity
one must ask Does the information consist mostly of facts or does it contain opinion? Is the
author upfront about stating any affiliations of importance? Upon investigation of a few
different articles I found that the articles were presented with facts and contained little to no
opinion statements. One article that I found clearly stated that they were funded in part by a
division of the NIH. The NIH website managed to uphold objectivity and clearly stated when
there could be a potential for bias.
Ease of Navigation
I found this website very easy to navigate. There were no broken hyperlinks that I could
find and there were clearly marked heading to find topics of any nature. There was also a search
feature so you could type in keywords and return results ore relevant to your need as opposed to
searching through the topic headings.
Privacy and Security
After searching topic headings, I decided to utilize the search feature and found that by
typing privacy into the search bar, I found the privacy policies of a number of websites that
contribute to the NIH. All of which stated that personal information would not be shared unless
the person wants to give it to them. A lot of the sites did state that they do collect some data
about ones visit to the site as to better understand how the site is being used.

Credibility, Uses, and Importance to the Professional Nurse

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I believe that the NIH website is a credible source of information based on the
aforementioned information. According to Robert Harris (Evaluating Internet Research Sources,
2013), if we use the CARS (Credibility, Accuracy, Reasonableness, and Support) method of
evaluation, The NIH more that passes muster on these accounts. Another method for evaluating
websites for credibility is the CRAAP (Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose)
method (California State University, 2010), which also indicates that the NIH as a credible
resource.
I believe it is important for nurses to evaluate websites for credibility as we are
professionals that many people rely on for accurate and up to date information. We, as nurses,
could use the NIH website to provide information on specific diseases to our patients, we could
use the information to gain knowledge to expand our practice, and we could also use it as a
springboard into research of our very own.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that the NH website adheres to all of the standards and criteria to
establish credibility of a website. There was no indication of bias, the authors were experts in the
fields that they were discussing, and their field and clearly indicated. The website is easy to use
and can be utilized in many ways by the professional nurse. From getting information to give to a
patient to looking into research to further ones practice, the website has many uses.

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References

California State University. (2010, September 17). Meriam Library. Retrieved

September 19, 2014, from Evaluating information:applying the CRAAP test:
http://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/eval_websites.pdf
Harris, R. (2013, December 27). Virtual Salt. Retrieved September 19, 2014, from
Evaluating internet research sources: http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm
National Institute of Health. (2014, Septemeber 9). National Institutes of Health.
Retrieved September 19, 2014, from About NIH: http://nih.gov/about/
State University of New York-Jefferson. (2014, February 5). Melvil Dewey Library.
Retrieved September 19, 2014, from 5.3 Determining the authorship
authority of a web site: http://sunyjefferson.libguides.com/content.php?
pid=127609&sid=1115761
University of Nevada- Reno. (2014, September 18). Mathewson-IGT Knowledge
Center. Retrieved September 19, 2014, from Research toolkit: evaluating
sources: http://guides.library.unr.edu/friendly.php?
action=82&s=toolkit/evaluting-sources