834 infection control & hospital epidemiology july 2017, vol. 38, no. 7
table 1. Criteria Selected for the Quality Assessment of the Blogs Architectures and Contents Assessment Criteria
Quotation
Blog architecture 1. Age of the blog
2. Presence of external link 3. Presence of blogroll 4. Presence of archives 5. Presence of video 6. Presence of pictures 7. Presence of audio
8. Possibility to leave comments
9. Link to social media
Blog content 1. Frequency of posts
2. Post published recently 3. Regularity of posts
4. Posts by invited experts 5. Presence of advert 6. Clear statement
7. Presentation, looking 8. Opinion from authors 9. Easy to read 10. Field covered
In years Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No
Yes/No Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly
Day of review, 1 week before, 1 month before, 1 quarter before, 2 quarters before Yes/No Yes/No Yes/No
Scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (high) Scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (high) Scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (high) Scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (high) Broad, medium, narrow
…
Yes=1 point Yes=1 point Yes=1 point Yes=1 point Yes=1 point Yes=1 point Yes=1 point
Yes=1 point
Daily=5, >1 year=1a Day=5, >6 months=0a
Yes=1 pointa Yes=1 point No=1 point 1 to 5a 1 to 5a 1 to 5a 1 to 5a …
aCriteria considered of high importance were multiplied by a factor of 2 in the formula.
Criteria Included in the Quality Assessment Tool
via the website and newsletter of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Data Analysis
For categorical variables, χ2 tests or Fisher’s exact tests, as appropriate, were performed. For continuous variables, the median and interquartile range (IQR) were used to describe the data, and Student t test or Mann–Whitney U test, as appropriate, were used to compare value groups. These ana- lyses were performed using Stata release 10.0 software (Stata Corp LP, College Station, TX). All P values were 2-sided, and P<.05 was considered significant. The analysis of blogger and reader answers was performed using NVivo 10 software (QSR International, Melbourne, Australia).
results Blog Selection
Electronic and subsequent manual searches identified 326 blogs based on the home-page content. Among these, 207 were excluded based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria described above: the most recent posts of 141 blogs were >6 months old; for 19 blogs the topic was incorrect; 17 blogs were commercial in nature; 16 blogs were aimed toward a nonprofessional audience; and the remaining were not blogs, were closed, or were not in English. Thus, 88 blogs remained for analysis (Figure 1). Overall, 46 of the selected blogs (52%) focused on
microbiology (ie, 9 bacteriology, 2 mycology, 8 parasitology, 9 virology); 28 (32%) focused on infectious diseases (9 on specific topics); 7 (8%) focused on infection prevention and control; and 7 (8%) focused on antimicrobial stewardship (Table 2).
Blog and Blogger Characteristics
The average age of the 88 blogs we analyzed was 4.7 years (SD, 2.8; range, 0.5–11 years). Moreover, 55% of these blogs had been continuously maintained for >5years. The selected blogs were mainly based in the United States (n=44, 51%) and the United Kingdom (n=15, 18%). Most blog architecture contained external links (n=82, 93%), archives (n=68, 77%), links with social media (n=71, 81%), pictures (n=77, 87%), or space for comments (n=80, 91%). Blogrolls, audio, and video were infrequent. The blogs were generally maintained by individual professionals (n=57, 89%); however, some blogs were maintained by organizations (n=12, 14%), universities (n=4, 5%), or noncommercial journals (n=3, 3%). Table 2 displays blogger demographics and background.
Among the 72 bloggers for whom data were available, most were male (n=50, 69%) and aged in their 30s (n=20, 32%) or 40s (n=16, 25%). Bloggers had a PhD±MD in 36 of 67 cases (54%), and 10 (15%) held a Master’s degree. Furthermore, 25 bloggers (36%) were academics; 33 (48%) were clinicians; and 19 (28%) bloggers were both academics and clinicians. We found information on the worldwide traffic rank for 65 of the
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