Evaluation of a Dutch women's health website

Abstract

Introduction: Women’s health is gaining attention the last few years and women’s health should be improved in many aspects. E-health could enable improvement of women’s health. A Dutch website was developed to improve women’s health by using three strategies: giving trustworthy information, listening to women and taking women seriously. Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) are aspects of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which is often used in e-health evaluation. Aim make recommendations for improvement of the website to the developers in their further design of the website. Design: An explanatory sequential mixed methods model was used. Methods: A consecutive sample was used to recruit participants. A total of 130 participants responded to an online survey about PU and PEOU. A focus group with five participants and telephone interviews with two participants were organised to retrieve in-depth information on the results of the survey and on the three strategies used by the website. Results: PU and PEOU were rated high in this study and were also recognised during the focus group and telephone interviews. The attention for women’s health was found of high importance. Public relations is another subject often discussed in the focus group. Survey participants did not take action after reading the information, however focus group and interview participants thought taking action meant remembering the information for later use. Discussion: The TAM is difficult to use in a website evaluation because it is not specifically developed for website evaluation. Furthermore the mean age and education of participants was relatively high. Conclusion: Information on the website was found useful, easy to find and up-to-date. The time-effort of visiting the website was found to be worthwhile. The attention for women’s health on the website is also positive point, however, visibility of the website should be improved.