ArticleMedical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making2014
Blocks, ovals, or people? Icon type affects risk perceptions and recall of pictographs.
Article in Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04102540 (Information Visualizations to Facilitate HIV-related Patient-provider Communication in New York City), which is not on this map. Cited by 60 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Information Visualizations to Facilitate HIV-related Patient-provider Communication in New York City (Info Viz: HIV-NYC)
Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 143 citations in OpenAlex.
- Enhancing Patient Understanding of Laboratory Test Results: Systematic Review of Presentation Formats and Their Impact on Perception, Decision, Action, and Memory.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Cardiovascular risk communication strategies in primary prevention. A systematic review with narrative synthesis.Journal of advanced nursing · 2022Pooled it
- Information visualizations of symptom information for patients and providers: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2019Pooled it
- Visualization approaches to support healthy aging: A systematic review.Journal of innovation in health informatics · 2016Pooled it
- Evaluating Whether Icons and Visual Elements Help or Hinder Understanding of Key Information for Research Studies: Results From a Randomized Trial.Health literacy research and practice · 2026Trial
- A Web-Based Tool to Perform a Values Clarification for Stroke Prevention in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation: Design and Preliminary Testing Study.JMIR cardio · 2025Trial
- Using Separate Single-Outcome Risk Presentations Instead of Integrated Multioutcome Formats Improves Comprehension in Discrete Choice Experiments.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2024Trial
- Infographics on risks associated with COVID-19 and the willingness to get the AstraZeneca vaccine: two randomized online experiments.BMC public health · 2024Trial
- "I Was Trying to Do the Maths": Exploring the Impact of Risk Communication in Discrete Choice Experiments.The patient · 2019Trial
- Crowd-figure-pictograms improve women's knowledge about mammography screening: results from a randomised controlled trial.BMC research notes · 2018Trial
- A Randomized Study of Patient Risk Perception for Incidental Renal Findings on Diagnostic Imaging Tests.AJR. American journal of roentgenology · 2018Trial
- Health numeracy: perspectives about using numbers in health management from African American patients receiving dialysis.Hemodialysis international. International Symposium on Home Hemodialysis · 2015Trial
- Preferences for treatment for latent tuberculosis infection in primary care among people in the United States at increased risk of tuberculosis: a pilot survey.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Digital Patient Decision Aid for Antiobesity Medications: Mixed Methods Study of Human-Centered Design and Usability Evaluation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Interactive, Personalized Patient Decision Aid for COVID-19 Vaccination in Canada: User-Centered Design Approach.JMIR human factors · 2026Article
- Graphical Perception of Icon Arrays versus Bar Charts for Value Comparisons in Health Risk Communication.IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics · 2026Article
- Leveraging artificial intelligence to reduce diagnostic errors in emergency medicine: Challenges, opportunities, and future directions.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2025Review
- How the manner in which data is visualized affects and corrects (mis)perceptions of political polarization.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- A pilot test of an infographic-based health communication intervention to enhance patient education among Latino persons with HIV.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundResearch has demonstrated that icon arrays (also called "pictographs") are an effective method of communicating risk statistics and appear particularly useful to less numerate and less graphically literate people. Yet research is very limited regarding whether icon type affects how people interpret and remember these graphs.
methods1502 people age 35-75 from a demographically diverse online panel completed a cardiovascular risk calculator based on Framingham data using their actual age, weight, and other health data. Participants received their risk estimate in an icon array graphic that used 1 of 6 types of icons: rectangular blocks, filled ovals, smile/frown faces, an outline of a person's head and shoulders, male/female "restroom" person icons (gender matched), or actual head-and-shoulder photographs of people of varied races (gender matched). In each icon array, blue icons represented cardiovascular events and gray icons represented those who would not experience an event. We measured perceived risk magnitude, approximate recall, and opinions about the icon arrays, as well as subjective numeracy and an abbreviated measure of graphical literacy.
resultsRisk recall was significantly higher with more anthropomorphic icons (restroom icons, head outlines, and photos) than with other icon types, and participants rated restroom icons as most preferred. However, while restroom icons resulted in the highest correlations between perceived and actual risk among more numerate/graphically literate participants, they performed no better than other icon types among less numerate/graphically literate participants.
conclusionsIcon type influences both risk perceptions and risk recall, with restroom icons in particular resulting in improved outcomes. However, optimal icon types may depend on numeracy and/or graphical literacy skills.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.