The Effects Of Presentation Formats And Age On Use And Comprehension Of Health Information

Consumer-oriented health information technologies(CHITs)are emerging as promising tools to facilitate consumers' healthcare process and disease management.One of main functions of the CHITs is to track,record,and manage consumers' health information and health records.However,consumers usually have difficulty in understanding current presentation formats of health information.The situation can be even worse among older adults,as they usually have deteriorated memory and cognitive ability,are less educated,and consequently have lower knowledge and skills at interpreting health information.It has been suggested that graphical presentation formats may be effective in facilitating information comprehension.However,there has been little research to inform which kinds of and how graphical presentation formats are most likely to achieve the necessary level of health information comprehension.Knowledge of age-related differences in the effects of graphical formats for health information is also unavailable.The objective of this study was to examine the effects of graphical formats and age on consumers' comprehension and perceptions of the use.This study included two human factors experiments: Experiment 1 focused on one single self-monitoring test results,while experiment 2 focused on self-monitoring test records.Both experiments implemented a within-and-between subjects design,where age(young(n=36)and older group(n=36))served as the between-subjects factor,and graphical presentation formats served as the within-subjects factor.The graphical presentation format in experiment 1 had four levels,which were basic graph,color enhanced graph,text/color enhanced graph and personalized information enhanced graph,while the format in experiment 2 had six levels,which were basic line chart,color line chart,enhanced line chart,basic table,color table and enhanced table).The presentation formats varied by information cues.The outcome measures in both experiments included user performance(i.e.,task completion time and accuracy rate),perceived health risk,perceptions(i.e.,perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness),affections(i.e.,perceived confidence and satisfaction),preferences and eye movement measures(i.e.,time to first fixation and total fixation duration).Repeated measures analyses of variance(ANOVAs)were used to analyze the effects of graphical format and age on user performance,perceived health risk,perceptions,affections and eye movement measures.Chi-square test was performed to examine the difference in user preference.The results in experiment 1 showed that the four graphs yielded comparable task performance,while text/color,and personalized information enhanced graphs were believed to be easier and more useful in information comprehension,and led to increased confidence in correct comprehension of test results,compared with basic and color only enhanced graphs.Perceived health risk increased as graphs applied more information cues.There were age differences in task performance and visual attention,while both young and older adults had similar perceptions for the four graphical formats.Personalized information enhanced graph was preferred by both groups.As to experiment 2,the result showed that line chart can always provide better user performance,perceptions and affections compared with table.Color line chart/table can provide the best task performance.Perceived health risk,perceived ease of use,perceived usefulness,perceived self-confidence and satisfaction increased as graphs applied more information cues.There were age differences in task performance and visual attention,while both young and older adults had similar perceived health risk,perceptions and perceived self-confidence for the six graphical formats.Enhanced line chart was preferred by both groups.This study demonstrates that there are differences across varied graphical formats and among young and older adults with respect to how self-monitoring results are viewed,assessed and perceived.The findings facilitate our understanding of the effects of presentation format and age on consumers' perceptions and comprehension of health information.This study provides important implications on the design of health information presentation,which can further promote the development of CHITs and improve consumers' healthcare.