The effects of infographics and several quantitative versus qualitative formats for cardiovascular disease risk, including heart age, on people ’s risk understanding

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk calculators have become common in preventive care [1], but end-users are known to have difficulties in interpreting the results. One problem is that since the results are usually communicated via absolute risk percentages, people have difficulty deriving meaning from such numbers [2,3]. Many studies have concentrated on how to convey risk numbers, e.g. through visual icon arrays and bar graphs. Although such representations do help [4,5], difficulties remain, especially for low-literate people who have trouble interpreting bar graphs [6].

Source: Patient Education and Counseling - March 11, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Olga C. Damman, Suzanne I. Vonk, Maaike J. van den Haak, Charlotte M.J. van Hooijdonk, Danielle R.M. Timmermans Source Type: research