Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial
Objectives To investigate the effects of adding high-grade quantitative evidence of outcomes of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages on further information-seeking behaviour by the use of routinely collected data. Setting Wikipedia, Cochrane summary pages and the Cochrane Library. Design R...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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2020
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/ |
| _version_ | 1848799747672899584 |
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| author | Adams, Clive E Montgomery, Alan A Aburrow, Tony Bloomfield, Sophie Briley, Paul M Carew, Ebun Chatterjee-Woolman, Suravi Feddah, Ghalia Friedel, Johannes Gibbard, Josh Haynes, Euan Hussein, Mohsin Jayaram, Mahesh Naylor, Samuel Perry, Luke Schmidt, Lena Siddique, Umer Tabaksert, Ayla Serena Taylor, Douglas Velani, Aarti White, Douglas Xia, Jun |
| author_facet | Adams, Clive E Montgomery, Alan A Aburrow, Tony Bloomfield, Sophie Briley, Paul M Carew, Ebun Chatterjee-Woolman, Suravi Feddah, Ghalia Friedel, Johannes Gibbard, Josh Haynes, Euan Hussein, Mohsin Jayaram, Mahesh Naylor, Samuel Perry, Luke Schmidt, Lena Siddique, Umer Tabaksert, Ayla Serena Taylor, Douglas Velani, Aarti White, Douglas Xia, Jun |
| author_sort | Adams, Clive E |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Objectives To investigate the effects of adding high-grade quantitative evidence of outcomes of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages on further information-seeking behaviour by the use of routinely collected data.
Setting Wikipedia, Cochrane summary pages and the Cochrane Library.
Design Randomised trial.
Participants Wikipedia pages which were highly relevant to up-to-date Cochrane Schizophrenia systematic reviews that contained a Summary of Findings table.
Interventions Eligible Wikipedia pages in the intervention group were seeded with tables of best evidence of the effects of care and hyperlinks to the source Cochrane review. Eligible Wikipedia pages in the control group were left unchanged.
Main outcome measures Routinely collected data on access to the full text and summary web page (after 12 months).
Results We randomised 70 Wikipedia pages (100% follow-up). Six of the 35 Wikipedia pages in the intervention group had the tabular format deleted during the study but all pages continued to report the same data within the text. There was no evidence of effect on either of the coprimary outcomes: full-text access adjusted ratio of geometric means 1.30, 95% CI: 0.71 to 2.38; page views 1.14, 95% CI: 0.6 to 2.13. Results were similar for all other outcomes, with exception of Altmetric score for which there was some evidence of clear effect (1.36, 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.78).
Conclusions The pursuit of fair balance within Wikipedia healthcare pages is impressive and its reach unsurpassed. For every person who sought and clicked the reference on the ‘intervention’ Wikipedia page to seek more information (the primary outcome), many more are likely to have been informed by the page alone. Enriching Wikipedia content is, potentially, a powerful way to improve health literacy and it is possible to test the effects of seeding pages with evidence. This trial should be replicated, expanded and developed. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:40:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-60302 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:40:35Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-603022020-04-13T01:21:46Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/ Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial Adams, Clive E Montgomery, Alan A Aburrow, Tony Bloomfield, Sophie Briley, Paul M Carew, Ebun Chatterjee-Woolman, Suravi Feddah, Ghalia Friedel, Johannes Gibbard, Josh Haynes, Euan Hussein, Mohsin Jayaram, Mahesh Naylor, Samuel Perry, Luke Schmidt, Lena Siddique, Umer Tabaksert, Ayla Serena Taylor, Douglas Velani, Aarti White, Douglas Xia, Jun Objectives To investigate the effects of adding high-grade quantitative evidence of outcomes of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages on further information-seeking behaviour by the use of routinely collected data. Setting Wikipedia, Cochrane summary pages and the Cochrane Library. Design Randomised trial. Participants Wikipedia pages which were highly relevant to up-to-date Cochrane Schizophrenia systematic reviews that contained a Summary of Findings table. Interventions Eligible Wikipedia pages in the intervention group were seeded with tables of best evidence of the effects of care and hyperlinks to the source Cochrane review. Eligible Wikipedia pages in the control group were left unchanged. Main outcome measures Routinely collected data on access to the full text and summary web page (after 12 months). Results We randomised 70 Wikipedia pages (100% follow-up). Six of the 35 Wikipedia pages in the intervention group had the tabular format deleted during the study but all pages continued to report the same data within the text. There was no evidence of effect on either of the coprimary outcomes: full-text access adjusted ratio of geometric means 1.30, 95% CI: 0.71 to 2.38; page views 1.14, 95% CI: 0.6 to 2.13. Results were similar for all other outcomes, with exception of Altmetric score for which there was some evidence of clear effect (1.36, 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.78). Conclusions The pursuit of fair balance within Wikipedia healthcare pages is impressive and its reach unsurpassed. For every person who sought and clicked the reference on the ‘intervention’ Wikipedia page to seek more information (the primary outcome), many more are likely to have been informed by the page alone. Enriching Wikipedia content is, potentially, a powerful way to improve health literacy and it is possible to test the effects of seeding pages with evidence. This trial should be replicated, expanded and developed. 2020-03-02 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en cc_by https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/1/e033655.full.pdf Adams, Clive E, Montgomery, Alan A, Aburrow, Tony, Bloomfield, Sophie, Briley, Paul M, Carew, Ebun, Chatterjee-Woolman, Suravi, Feddah, Ghalia, Friedel, Johannes, Gibbard, Josh, Haynes, Euan, Hussein, Mohsin, Jayaram, Mahesh, Naylor, Samuel, Perry, Luke, Schmidt, Lena, Siddique, Umer, Tabaksert, Ayla Serena, Taylor, Douglas, Velani, Aarti, White, Douglas and Xia, Jun (2020) Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial. BMJ Open, 10 (2). e033655. ISSN 2044-6055 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033655 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033655 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2019-033655 |
| spellingShingle | Adams, Clive E Montgomery, Alan A Aburrow, Tony Bloomfield, Sophie Briley, Paul M Carew, Ebun Chatterjee-Woolman, Suravi Feddah, Ghalia Friedel, Johannes Gibbard, Josh Haynes, Euan Hussein, Mohsin Jayaram, Mahesh Naylor, Samuel Perry, Luke Schmidt, Lena Siddique, Umer Tabaksert, Ayla Serena Taylor, Douglas Velani, Aarti White, Douglas Xia, Jun Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title | Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title_full | Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title_fullStr | Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title_full_unstemmed | Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title_short | Adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant Wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| title_sort | adding evidence of the effects of treatments into relevant wikipedia pages: a randomised trial |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/60302/ |