Fuzzy VIKOR approach: Evaluating quality of internet health information

Abstract

Proliferation of health related information on the internet is both welcoming and a concern. For instance when solicited information goes wrong, it tends to have dire consequences on the general public. Assessing the quality of internet health information is often difficult but a rational and systematic approach can be useful in evaluating the quality of the services they render to the public. The paper proposes a fuzzy VIKOR framework for evaluating and ranking internet health information providers under a fuzzy environment where uncertainties and subjectivities are catered for with linguistic variables. Linguistic variables with triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) are used to evaluate weights of the evaluation criteria and the rankings of each internet health information provider. A numerical example is demonstrated using HIV/AIDS online information providers in the most adult prevalent country in the world. The proposed method is compared with TOPSIS and can be applied in evaluating the quality of other specific internet health information providers.