Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, UK.
Public Health. 2011 Aug;125(8):554-60. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2011.02.011. Epub 2011 Jul 22.
To conduct a pilot study into the comprehension and visualisation preferences of geographic information by public health practitioners (PHPs), particularly in the context of interactive, Internet-based atlases.
Structured human-computer interaction interviews.
Seven academia-based PHPs were interviewed as information service users based on a structured questionnaire to assess their understanding of geographic representations of morbidity data, and identify their visualisation preferences in a geographic information systems environment.
Awareness of area-based deprivation indices and the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2007 health and disability domain was near-universal. However, novice users of disease maps had difficulties in interpreting data classifications, in understanding supplementary information in the form of box plots and histograms, and in making use of links between interactive tabular and cartographic information. Choices for colour plans when viewing maps showed little agreement between users, although pre-viewing comments showed preferences for red-blue diverging schema.
PHPs new to geographic information would benefit from enhanced interpretive support documentation to meet their needs when using Internet-based, interactive public health atlases, which are rarely provided at such sites. Technical, software-related support alone is insufficient. Increased interaction between PHPs and mapmakers would be beneficial to maximise the potential of the current growth in interactive, electronic atlases, and improve geographic information support for public health decision-making and informing the wider public.
针对公共卫生从业人员（PHPs）对地理信息的理解和可视化偏好进行试点研究，特别是在交互式网络地图的背景下。
结构化人机交互访谈。
根据结构化问卷，对 7 名基于学术界的 PHPs 进行了访谈，以评估他们对发病率数据地理表示的理解，并确定他们在地理信息系统环境中的可视化偏好。
对基于区域的贫困指数和 2007 年多维度贫困指数健康和残疾领域的认识几乎是普遍的。然而，疾病地图的新手用户在解释数据分类、理解箱线图和直方图形式的补充信息以及利用交互式表格和制图信息之间的链接方面存在困难。在查看地图时，颜色方案的选择在用户之间几乎没有达成一致，尽管预查看评论显示出对红蓝发散模式的偏好。
对于地理信息的新手 PHPs，在使用基于互联网的交互式公共卫生地图集时，需要增强解释性支持文档以满足他们的需求，而这些文档在这些网站上很少提供。仅提供技术、软件相关的支持是不够的。增加 PHPs 和制图者之间的互动将有利于最大限度地发挥当前交互式电子地图集的增长潜力，并改善地理信息对公共卫生决策制定和向更广泛公众提供信息的支持。
