Westat, Rockville, MD, USA.
University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, MD, USA.
Res Social Adm Pharm. 2024 Dec;20(12 Pt A):1075-1088. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2024.08.092. Epub 2024 Sep 3.
The prevalence of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for prescription drugs has led to concerns about how consumers interpret the medical information conveyed in these ads. One strategy for improving lay understanding of medical information involves incorporating quantitative information about a treatment's potential benefits and risks.
This literature review investigates laypersons' interpretations of statistical concepts, expanding on past reviews and including terms that may be used in DTC prescription drug advertising.
We searched six databases for articles published from January 2000 to October 2021. Articles were included if they were in English and examined general or lay audiences' comprehension of quantitative or statistical concepts, without limiting the context of the studies to medical situations.
We identified 25 eligible articles. The evidence suggests that likelihood ratios, odds ratios, probabilities, numbers needed to treat/harm, and confidence intervals hinder comprehension of quantitative information. The results are mixed for information presented as frequencies, percentages, absolute risk reduction, and relative risk reduction. The mixed findings could be due to numeracy, framing as risks or benefits, and operationalization of the outcomes. We found no studies examining interpretations of minimum, maximum, central tendency, power, statistical significance, or hazard ratio.
Studies spanning several decades have examined how laypeople interpret statistical concepts. While a few terms are consistently studied, many questions still remain on how to make risk information more understandable to lay audiences, particularly those with low numeracy.
直接面向消费者（DTC）的处方药广告的流行引发了人们对消费者如何理解这些广告中传达的医学信息的担忧。一种提高非专业人士理解医学信息的策略是纳入关于治疗潜在益处和风险的定量信息。
本文献综述调查了非专业人士对统计概念的解释，扩展了过去的综述，并纳入了可能在 DTC 处方药广告中使用的术语。
我们从 2000 年 1 月至 2021 年 10 月搜索了六个数据库中的文章。如果文章是英文的，并且检查了普通或非专业观众对定量或统计概念的理解，而不限于将研究的背景限制在医疗情况下，则将其包括在内。
我们确定了 25 篇符合条件的文章。有证据表明，似然比、优势比、概率、需要治疗/危害的人数以及置信区间会阻碍对定量信息的理解。呈现为频率、百分比、绝对风险降低和相对风险降低的信息的结果好坏参半。混合结果可能是由于计算能力、作为风险或益处的框架以及结果的操作化。我们没有发现研究解释最小、最大、中心趋势、功率、统计显着性或危害比的研究。
跨越几十年的研究已经研究了非专业人士如何解释统计概念。虽然有几个术语一直在研究，但如何使风险信息更易于非专业观众理解，尤其是那些计算能力较低的观众，仍有许多问题有待解答。
