Public interest in occupational health based on information search trends in the Spanish and English editions of Wikipedia: infodemiological study

Abstract

Introduction: To determine and analyze temporal trends of searching information patterns about occupational health through the Spanish and English editions of Wikipedia.

Method: Infodemiological study: descriptive, ecological and correlational. The data was obtained from the online search on the Wikipedia, both the Spanish [https://es.wikipedia.org/] and the English edition [https://en.wikipedia.org/]. The searched terms in the Spanish edition were: “Seguridad y salud laboral”; “Accidente laboral”; “Medicina del trabajo” and “Enfermería del trabajo”. The searched terms in the English edition were “Occupational safety and health”; “Work accident”; “Occupational medicine” and “Occupational health nursing”. The studied variables were: pageviews, editors, editions, number of guards, landmarks and seasonality. Qualitative variables were described by their frequency and percentage, whereas quantitative variables, by mean, standard deviation, median, maximum and minimum. Temporal evolution of the trends was described through regression analysis and the relation between the variables through Pearson correlation coefficient.

The studied period was from 1st July 2015 (date on which Wikipedia offers the first data) to 31st December 2022. The date of consultation and data collection was 29th March 2023.

Results: The term with the highest number of total pageviews was “Occupational safety and health”, with 3110570, followed by “Seguridad y salud laboral”, with 1752738. The term with the lowest number of total pageviews was ”Enfermería del trabajo” with 42423. The selected terms showed an inverse trend except for the term “Work accident”, which presented a direct trend. Regarding the coefficient of determination, the results obtained were: “Medicina del trabajo” R2=0,617, “Occupational medicine” R2=0,571, “Seguridad y salud laboral” R2=0,568, “Occupational safety and health” R2=0,737 and “Work accident” R2=0,620. The Pearson correlation coefficient between each term in Spanish and its equivalent in English of the terms “Seguridad y salud laboral”, “Accidente laboral”, “Enfermería del trabajo” and “Medicina del trabajo” was R= 0,75; R= -0,569; R= 0,296 y R= 0,758 respectively.

Conclusions: In general, it has been detected a decreasing trend of Wikipedia searches for the selected terms, except for the term “Accidente laboral”, the only one that has shown an increasing trend. In relation to the grade of association between the two editions, it was found that both terms “Seguridad y salud laboral” and “Medicina del trabajo” presented a good association. “Enfermería del trabajo” had a low direct association and the term “Accidente laboral” a moderate inverse association.