Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Assessment. 2023 Dec;30(8):2449-2460. doi: 10.1177/10731911221147042. Epub 2023 Feb 1.
Measurement error is an inherent part of any test score. This uncertainty is generally communicated in ways that can be difficult to understand for clinical practitioners. In this empirical study, we evaluate the impact of several communication formats on the interpretation of measurement accuracy and its influence on the decision-making process in clinical practice. We provided 230 clinical practitioners with score reports in five formats: textual, error bar, violin plot, diamond plot, and quantile dot plot. We found that quantile dot plots significantly increased accuracy in the assessment of measurement uncertainty compared with other formats. However, a direct relation between visualization format and decision quality could not be found. Although traditional confidence intervals and error bars were favored by many participants due to their familiarity, responses revealed several misconceptions that make the suitability of these formats for communicating uncertainty questionable. Our results indicate that new visualization formats can successfully reduce errors in interpretation.
测量误差是任何测试分数固有的一部分。这种不确定性通常以临床医生难以理解的方式传达。在这项实证研究中，我们评估了几种沟通格式对测量精度的解释及其对临床实践决策过程的影响。我们向 230 名临床医生提供了五种格式的分数报告：文本、误差条、小提琴图、菱形图和分位数点图。我们发现，与其他格式相比，分位数点图显著提高了对测量不确定性的评估准确性。然而，并没有发现可视化格式与决策质量之间的直接关系。尽管由于熟悉程度，许多参与者更喜欢传统的置信区间和误差条，但他们的反应显示出一些误解，这使得这些格式用于传达不确定性的适用性值得怀疑。我们的结果表明，新的可视化格式可以成功减少解释中的错误。
