Recorded presentation

Faina Linkov, MPH¹, Ronald E. LaPorte, PhD¹, Mita Lovalekar, MD¹, and Fan Zhou, MD MPH Student². (1) Department of Epidemiology, Global Health Network-Supercourse Group, University of Pittsburgh, 3512 Fifth Ave. #312, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, 412-521-1150, fyl1@pitt.edu, (2) Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Access to high quality epidemiological data is a cornerstone of public health. Improved exchange of epidemiological data world wide is essential for better health in both developing and developed countries. There are numerous materials on the internet in the area of epidemiology; however their quality has rarely been assessed scientifically.

The NIH funded Supercourse project (www.pitt.edu/~super1) is a collection of over 1650 lectures on epidemiology and public health, targeting the teacher. It is being developed by over 13000 faculty members from 151 countries who are sharing for free their best epidemiological materials.

Quality control mechanisms of the lectures are developed based on an open peer-review system Statistical Quality Control originally developed by Deming for Industry. At the end of each lecture there is a review form that allows reviewers to rate the lecture and submit comments to authors. Review forms are based on five-point Likert scales, commonly used for the evaluation of educational programs.

We analyzed the reviews of the first 1000 lectures submitted to the Supercourse. We received 1542 reviews, or on average 1.5 reviews per lecture. On a scale of 1-5 (1-lowers possible score and 5 highest possible score) the lectures were overall rated an extremely positive 4.12 out of 5, SD = 0.72. We are planning to compare the existing reviews of the Supercourse lectures to the reviews provided by the experts in the field of epidemiology. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to look at the quality of epidemiological health information on the Internet.

Learning Objectives:

• -To get an overview of the Supercourse, global library of lectures on prevention
• -To learn about the new tools of sharing epidemiological data via internet
• -To find out more about quality control of epidemiological information on the Internet

Keywords: Internet Tools, Quality

Related Web page: www.pitt.edu/~super1

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation