Testing Numeric Formats for Presenting Data About Treatment Benefits and Harms

White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Status: Completed

Conditions: Risk Communication

Treatments: Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT00950014

16783

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to test comprehension of five numeric formats used to present data about treatment benefits and harms.

Enrollment: 2,944 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Participants will be randomly selected from a research panel of more than 60,000 U.S. households (Knowledge Networks).

Trial design

2,944 participants in 5 patient groups

Percentage format only

Experimental group

Description:

Numbers are presented in percentage format (e.g., 35%, 0.2%) only.

Treatment:

Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data

Fixed frequency format only

Experimental group

Description:

Numbers are presented in fixed frequency format only (5 out of 1000, 0.6 out of 1000). Denominators remains the same for each number.

Treatment:

Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data

Variable frequency format

Experimental group

Description:

Frequency denominators are adjusted to keep the numerator greater than 1, so they may change throughout the survey (e.g., 6 out of 1000, 42 out of 100)

Treatment:

Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data

Fixed combination format

Active Comparator group

Description:

Numbers are presented with both percentages and frequencies, and frequency denominators remain fixed (e.g., _ out of 1000).

Treatment:

Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data

Variable combination format

Experimental group

Description:

Numbers are presented with both percentages and frequencies, but frequency denominators may vary (e.g., _ out of 1000, _ out of 100).

Treatment:

Other: Presentation of drug efficacy and side effect data