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There are unspoken guidelines for websites regarding ADHD that everyone should know. The website people are getting their information from should have three qualifying elements that a person should look for to determine if the website is even relevant at all. Objectivity, what is the objective of the author, the currency of the website, and the accuracy of the website compared to other sites. How should a person researching things make sure what they are reading online is relevant? Every website should have these three criteria and if they do not, do not believe what they say no matter how absurd they may seem.

Some things that need to be talked about before going into the information on the website CHADD are the understanding of these three criteria. People should look for all three of these criteria to rule out if they will be misinformed by reading this website or not. The first of the three criteria are Objectivity. Objectivity is something that can be notice as soon as you open the page, or it can be something that you might have to dig a little bit for. Basically, objectivity is just the objective of the author of the website. Obviously if there are multiple ads on the website it is probably not a website that people want to get information from. The second is currency. Currency is probably the easiest to find the only thing people will need to find for this is dates found within the websites. Obviously if the website seems to be outdated it probably is. Accuracy of the website is the last and not least of the three criteria. Accuracy of the website can be found within where the author go their information so, people should look for the authors references.

The website that will be discussed in this paper is from CHADD under the “Living With ADHD” (CHADD, 2018) tab. Within this website it never gives an exact author although it does give references from where the people or person who made this website has gotten their information that they have placed into this website. They are provided at the bottom of the page under “For More Information” (CHADD,2018). This will cover the accuracy portion of the three criteria.

The people who read this website for the information they need will need to look for another criterion and this one is easier to find and should also be the first criteria they find. At the very bottom of the page there is a c with a circle which is a copyright symbol. After the copywrite symbol the website says, “2022 CHADD” (CHADD, 2018). This is how people will come to understand the currency of this website.

This is easy right? Yeah? Well, you are not done yet. There is still one more criterion on this website we have yet to find still. This isn’t good we have not even read anything this website has talked about so far. Sometimes you do not even have to. People can rule that this information is relevant from the other two criteria. Although if the person looking did not look for objectivity afterwards this person is probably going to use misinformation. The CHADD website on the bottom of the page states: “The information provided by CHADD’s National Resource Center on ADHD is supported by Cooperative Agreement Number NU38DD005376 funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).” (CHADD, 2018). This means that the website did not pass this element of the three criteria needed for a relevant website. There are several other clues on this website like the donate buttons and the ads, but this is the most black and white they could have ever put it. This websites authors uses the CDC’s website to get their information. Although these authors have their own bias opinions on the topics talked about in the article because this will tell people the contents of this website do not represent the official views of the CDC (CHADD, 2018).

Now the overall ruling of the website “CHADD” is the website is not credible because it did not pass the criteria need for the website to be so. The best thing to do is immediately get off this website and continue to find something that is credible. It is a mystery that misinformation is even allowed to be on the internet, but I guess that is why the saying “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” is a thing.

References

CHADD. (2018). Understanding ADHD - CHADD. CHADD. https://chadd.org/understanding-adhd/

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