Methods
We randomly selected articles from the consumeroriented Web pages of the associations that, at the time,
represented the top 5 health-related causes of death, per an
October 2006 report from the National Center for Health
Statistics (Table 1).9
To ensure the articles from the American Lung Association were specific to COPD, we selected
the articles from the “COPD Center” page of that Web
site. We gathered a convenience sample of 20 articles from
each association’s Web site, from lists of consumeroriented articles. Specifically, at each Web site, without
reading the article titles, one of the authors (TMW) randomly selected 20 articles from the site’s list of publicly
available articles by placing the pointer on random articles
and downloading them. We then categorized the articles
into 5 domains:
• General information: symptoms, causes, myths and misconceptions, effects
• Definition and description of the condition and its subtypes
• Diagnosis/screening: invasive and noninvasive tests to
diagnose the disease
• Treatments and adverse effects
• Risk factors and prevention