Public Health Schools Site Evaluation

There are a total of 413 public health schools in the US. While all of these schools have websites, 374 public health schools have some social media presence, having accounts on at least one of the three major social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Of the schools that have a social media presence, the greatest number, almost 97% are on Facebook.

Visual Preferences

Color

Approximately 65.9% of the 413 public health schools use white as the primary color on their websites. Another 13.1% use grey as the primary color on their websites. Blue (6.5%), yellow (5.6%) and black (3.6%) are other colors commonly used as the primary color on public health school websites.

The colors used on the websites of the largest public health schools in the nation, are as follows:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: grey 49%
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: white 30% and grey 3.4%
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: white 28% and grey 3.2%

Font

The largest number, nearly 43.1%, of public health school websites use Arial as the primary font on their websites. Other fonts commonly used on public health school websites include Verdana (25.2%) and Helvetica (6.1%).

The largest public health school's websites use the following fonts:

1. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: Arial
2. Ohio State University - Main Campus: Helvetica
3. University of Minnesota - Twin Cities: Helvetica

Social Presence

Exactly 279 public health schools have YouTube channels. These schools each have an average of 463 YouTube channel subscribers. The public health schools with the greatest number of YouTube channel subscribers are:

1. Harvard University: 28,331 subscribers
2. Yale University: 20,055 subscribers
3. Columbia University in the City of New York: 4,146 subscribers

Exactly 321 public health schools have Twitter accounts. These schools each have an average of 3,058 Twitter account followers. The public health schools with the greatest number of Twitter followers are:

1. Harvard University: 69,704 followers
2. Indiana University - Bloomington: 27,945 followers
3. University of Phoenix - Online Campus: 26,204 followers

Web Metrics

Although all public health schools have websites, only about 17% of these schools actually appear to regularly maintain their sites. This can be deduced from the fact that 83.9% of public health school websites have 3 or more broken links one click away from their homepage. The public health schools with the most number of broken links are:

1. University of Michigan - Dearborn: 5,490 broken links
2. Harrisburg Area Community College - Harrisburg: 4,597 broken links
3. Eastern Washington University: 4,378 broken links

It is also interesting to evaluate the number of HTML and CSS validation errors on public health school websites to get a sense of the quality of these sites. The public health school websites with the cleanest websites, i.e., least number of HTML and CSS validation errors are:

1. Pima Community College: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
2. University of Northern Colorado: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors
3. University of Connecticut: 0 HTML validation errors; 0 CSS validation errors

The public health school websites with the greatest number of HTML and CSS validation errors include:

1. University of Colorado Denver: 0 HTML validation errors; 794 CSS validation errors
2. Old Dominion University: 0 HTML validation errors; 615 CSS validation errors
3. Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center - New Orleans: 487 HTML validation errors; 9 CSS validation errors