How to Report Research on the Communication of Health-Related Numbers: The Research on Communicating Numbers (ReCoN) Guidelines

Natalie C. Benda, Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher and Jessica S. Ancker
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Natalie C. Benda: Columbia University School of Nursing, New York, NY, USA
Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher: University of Michigan School of Public Health, Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Jessica S. Ancker: Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Nashville, TN, USA

Medical Decision Making, 2025, vol. 45, issue 7, 826-833

Abstract: Background Research with lay audiences (e.g., patients, the public) can inform the communication of health-related numerical information. However, a recent systematic review (Making Numbers Meaningful) highlighted several common issues in the literature that impair readers’ ability to evaluate and replicate these studies. Purpose To create a set of guidelines for reporting research regarding the research on communicating numbers to lay audiences for health-related purposes. Reporting Recommendations We present 6 common reporting issues from research on communicating numbers that pertain to the background motivating the study, experimental design and analysis reporting, description of the outcomes, and reporting of the data presentation formats. To address these issues, we propose a set of 7 reporting guidelines including 1) specifying how study objectives address a gap in evidence on research on communicating numbers, 2) clearly reporting all combinations of data presentation formats (experimental conditions) compared, 3) providing verbatim examples of the data that were presented to the audience, 4) describing whether or not participants had access to the data presentation formats while outcomes were assessed, 5) reporting the wording of all outcome measures, 6) using standardized terms for both outcomes and data presentation formats, and 7) ensuring that broad outcome concepts such as gist, comprehension, or knowledge are concretely defined. Conclusions Future studies involving research on communicating health-related numbers should use these guidelines to improve the quality of reporting and ease of evidence synthesis in future efforts. Highlights Our systematic review allowed us to exhaustively identify and enumerate several common reporting issues from research on communicating numbers that make it challenging to synthesize evidence. Reporting issues involved not including the background motivating the gap the study addresses, insufficiently describing experimental designs and analyses, and failing to report information regarding the outcomes measured. We propose 7 reporting guidelines for future research on communicating numbers to address the issues detected: 1. Specification of how study objectives address a gap in evidence on research communicating numbers 2. Clearly reporting all combinations of data presentation format elements compared 3. Providing verbatim examples of the data presentation formats 4. Describing whether participants had access to the data presentation formats while outcomes were assessed 5. Reporting the wording of all outcome measures 6. Using standardized terms for both outcomes and data presentation formats 7. Ensuring that broad outcome concepts such as gist, comprehension, or knowledge are concretely defined Implementation of these guidelines will facilitate knowledge synthesis of research on communicating numbers and support creating evidence-based guidelines of best practices for communicating health-related numbers to lay audiences.

Keywords: health communication; risk communication; scholarly communication; health literacy; numeric communication; reporting guidelines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:45:y:2025:i:7:p:826-833

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X251346799

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