TY - JOUR T1 - Using the internet for research: results at a keystroke JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 939 LP - 940 VL - 57 IS - 545 AU - Elizabeth Murray Y1 - 2007/12/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/57/545/939.abstract N2 - This edition of the BJGP contains two very different studies: one on GPs' adherence to guidelines on management of hypertension,1 and one on patients' views about the role of antibiotics in respiratory tract infections.2 These diverse studies are linked by their methodology. Both sets of authors have obtained their data using internet-based questionnaires. Fifteen years ago this would not have been possible, but now the internet is increasingly used as a platform for undertaking research into health and health care, including web-based trials, web-based interviews and, as here, web-based surveys.The internet is a relatively new phenomenon. Originally developed for use by the military in the 1960s, the internet became available for general use in the 1990s. Since then there has been a phenomenal growth in services available online, with health and health care consistently remaining popular uses of the internet. A Google™ search for ‘health’ on 21 September 2007 found 869 million sites, outranked by ‘shopping’, but easily outstripping ‘sport’ and ‘sex’ (932, 780, and 506 million respectively).Initially, e-health research was limited to anguished articles bemoaning the inaccuracy of some of the health information on the internet. More recently, e-health research has evolved, both into a topic of research in its own right, and as a source of new methodologies.The traditional ‘gold standard’ for health services research is the randomised controlled trial (RCT), and some researchers have started undertaking web-based RCTs. There are two components to an RCT, either or both of which can be undertaken online. The first is the intervention. Researchers have undertaken … ER -