Natural Frequencies Do Not Foster Public Understanding of Medical Test Results

Stefania Pighin, Michel Gonzalez, Lucia Savadori and Vittorio Girotto

Medical Decision Making, 2016, vol. 36, issue 6, 686-691

Abstract: Major organizations recommend presenting medical test results in terms of natural frequencies, rather than single-event probabilities. The evidence, however, is that natural frequency presentations benefit at most one-fifth of samples of health service users and patients. Only one study reported a substantial benefit of these presentations. Here, we replicate that study, testing online survey respondents. Study 1 attributed the previously reported benefit of natural frequencies to a scoring artifact. Study 2 showed that natural frequencies may elicit evaluations that conflict with the normatively correct one, potentially hindering informed decision making. Ironically, these evaluations occurred less often when respondents reasoned about single-event probabilities. These results suggest caution in promoting natural frequencies as the best way to communicate medical test data to health service users and patients.

Keywords: natural frequencies; single-event probability; test result understanding; diagnostic reasoning, numeracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:36:y:2016:i:6:p:686-691

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X16640785

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