How Reliable Is The Mayo Clinic Website

Is Mayo Clinic’s Website Worth It?

One may use a variety of sources to research a topic but how does one know if the source is reliable? The Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization that focuses on informing and educating the public on various health topics such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). With the help of a team of medical professionals who write and revise them, the web pages cover topics ranging from conditions to healthy lifestyles to labs to test procedures. This website contains reliable information regarding news of illnesses, procedures for tests, reports on drugs, and details about finding a nearby doctor. It is vital to assess websites like this one for their reliability because it is important for the public

Mayo Clinic’s website includes a reference section and reliable top-level domain, thus satisfying the accuracy criterion. Of all the criteria, accuracy is one of the most important in evaluating a site’s worth. Accuracy is similar to the quality of the content on the website (“Evaluating Information Resources,” 2018). If the information on a website contains only incorrect data, people will not rely on it. To determine if a website’s data is correct, one can search for parenthetical citations or a reference section at the end of the web page; from there, one can verify the sources judging off the fact if the information from one source supports another. Although Mayo Clinic’s web page on ADHD does not contain parenthetical or in-text citations, it includes a reference section that

While Jennifer Chinn defines authority as the criterion that “refers to how correct the website or document is” (Writing with Purpose, 2015, para. 12), it also refers to the author’s qualifications. At the end of Mayo Clinic’s ADHD web page, there is a hyperlink on the authors, the Mayo Clinic Staff. Once one clicks on the link, there is a brief introduction about the different producing, writing, and revising teams. The writing team consists of a team of scientists and medical professionals. Most of whom obtained his/her MD and/or Ph.D. By including experts and professionals in the writing and editing teams, Mayo Clinic builds credibility on its site and furthermore information contained on said site. Another determining factor for authority is the reachability of the author if the web page includes the author’s contact information. The site presents the authority criterion via a “Contact Us” option. Rather than being about the authors of the web pages, the contact information refers to a list of the individual Mayo Clinic locations. If a website did not completely understand what it was writing about, it would not include its contact information because then if readers are confused about the content, he/she could reach out to the author and ask questions. Therefore, because Mayo Clinic writers are knowledgeable about the different health topics and can answer questions thrown at them, it