Graph Literacy

Abstract

The new graph literacy scale seems to be a suitable tool for assessing whether patients understand common graphical formats and shows that not everyone profits from standard visual displays. Research is needed on communication formats that can overcome the barriers of both low numeracy and graph literacy.

How to Reduce the Effect of Framing on Messages About Health

“…These results extend our own and others' previous findings about the usefulness of visual aids to enhance comprehension of medical risks, especially in people with low numeracy. 1,46,[61][62][63][64][65][68][69][70][71]73,75,76 They also support the notion that problems in communicating risks occur because inappropriate information formats are often used and not because of cognitive biases. 91,92 Similar reductions in what superficially looked like biased thinking were observed in the case of conditional probabilities (when expressed as natural frequencies, 93 ), relative risk reductions (when expressed as absolute risk reductions, 94 ), and singleevent probabilities.…”

“…It would be interesting to explore the effectiveness of visual aids in goal framing, that is, when the health message frames the relationship between certain behaviors and goal attainments-e.g., a message promoting condom use can emphasize either the benefits of this practice or the costs of avoiding this practice 4,14,15 ; see also 98 -and in choice behavior (i.e., the standard dependent variable in previous studies on the issue). Future research could also explore whether the impact of visual aids on the effect of framed messages depends on other important factors such as people's topic knowledge 99 or graphical skills, 62 and on the target of the behavior (i.e., whether people make decisions for themselves or for others 100 ).…”

“…59 Visual aids have been proposed as a potentially promising method for communicating risks. They can improve understanding of risks associated with different treatments, screenings, and lifestyles ( [60][61][62][63][64][65][66] ; but see 67 ) and promote consideration of beneficial treatments that have side effects. 68 Visual aids are also effective in eliminating errors induced by anecdotal narratives 69 and biases.…”

Watts your usage? A field study of householders’ literacy for residential electricity data

“…However, concerns have been raised about how clear and easy to understand energy data is (Roberts and Baker 2003). While visualizations tend to represent energy data as time series either in line or bar charts, people may not necessarily be good at reading graphs (Galesic and Garcia-Retamero 2011). In fact, Boy et al (2014) have argued that very few studies have investigated how well people can extract information from a graphical representation, such as a line graph or bar chart.…”

“…These typically visualize data showing consumption over time. However, most people are not trained in reading complex time series graphs and might therefore find it difficult to extract useful information and insights from them (Galesic and Garcia-Retamero 2011). Also, a large share of the population is thought to be energy illiterate (i.e., they are not familiar with the content of the feedback) (DeWaters and Powers 2011;Brewer 2013).…”