Numeracy skill and the communication, comprehension, and use of risk-benefit information.

Current health care policy emphasizes improving health outcomes and the efficacy of health care delivery by supporting informed consumer choices. At the same time, health information often involves uncertainty, and many people may lack the skills and knowledge to process this information, manage their health and health care, and make informed choices. Innumeracy, an element of poor health literacy, is associated with the comprehension and use of important health information. We review this literature and examine what can be done to help less numerate people act more effectively and take charge of their health.

[1]  P. Ubel,et al.  Validation of the Subjective Numeracy Scale: Effects of Low Numeracy on Comprehension of Risk Communications and Utility Elicitations , 2007, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[2]  Judith H Hibbard,et al.  Consumer Competencies and the Use of Comparative Quality Information , 2007, Medical care research and review : MCRR.

[3]  C. K. Mertz,et al.  Less Is More in Presenting Quality Information to Consumers , 2007, Medical care research and review : MCRR.

[4]  E. Marcus.  The silent epidemic--the health effects of illiteracy. , 2006, The New England journal of medicine.

[5]  C. K. Mertz,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Numeracy and Decision Making , 2022 .

[6]  Erika A. Waters,et al.  Formats for Improving Risk Communication in Medical Tradeoff Decisions , 2006, Journal of health communication.

[7]  H. Chua,et al.  Risk avoidance: Graphs versus numbers , 2006, Memory & cognition.

[8]  S. Frederick.  Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 19, Number 4—Fall 2005—Pages 25–42 Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making , 2022 .

[9]  P. Ubel,et al.  Reducing the Influence of Anecdotal Reasoning on People’s Health Care Decisions: Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Statistics? , 2005, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[10]  Sara J Knight,et al.  Patients' values and clinical substituted judgments: the case of localized prostate cancer. , 2005, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[11]  Paul Slovic,et al.  Affect, risk, and decision making. , 2005, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[12]  Carlos A Estrada,et al.  Literacy and Numeracy Skills and Anticoagulation Control , 2004, The American journal of the medical sciences.

[13]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  The Effect of Numerical Statements of Risk on Trust and Comfort with Hypothetical Physician Risk Communication , 2004, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[14]  G. Gigerenzer,et al.  Simple tools for understanding risks: from innumeracy to insight , 2003, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[15]  R. Thaler,et al.  Libertarian Paternalism is Not an Oxymoron , 2003 .

[16]  G. Elwyn,et al.  Personalised risk communication for informed decision making about entering screening programs. , 2003, The Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

[17]  Winston R. Sieck,et al.  Foreground:background salience: Explaining the effects of graphical displays on risk avoidance , 2003 .

[18]  J. Iglehart.  Changing health insurance trends. , 2002, The New England journal of medicine.

[19]  R. Herzlinger,et al.  Let's put consumers in charge of health care. , 2002, Harvard business review.

[20]  C. K. Mertz,et al.  Aging and decision‐making competence: an analysis of comprehension and consistency skills in older versus younger adults considering health‐plan options , 2002 .

[21]  Paul Slovic,et al.  Strategies for reporting health plan performance information to consumers: evidence from controlled studies. , 2002, Health services research.

[22]  Michael Pignone,et al.  Numeracy and the medical student's ability to interpret data. , 2002, Effective clinical practice : ECP.

[23]  Lisa M. Schwartz,et al.  Assessing Values for Health: Numeracy Matters , 2001, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[24]  B. Rimer,et al.  General Performance on a Numeracy Scale among Highly Educated Samples , 2001, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[25]  G. Elwyn,et al.  Presenting risk information--a review of the effects of "framing" and other manipulations on patient outcomes. , 2001, Journal of health communication.

[26]  J. G. Hollands,et al.  The visual communication of risk. , 1999, Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Monographs.

[27]  Lisa M. Schwartz,et al.  The Role of Numeracy in Understanding the Benefit of Screening Mammography , 1997, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[28]  Nina S. Parikh,et al.  Inadequate functional health literacy among patients at two public hospitals. , 1995, JAMA.

[29]  Improvement,et al.  Adult literacy in America : a first look at the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey , 1993 .

[30]  A. Tversky,et al.  Prospect theory: analysis of decision under risk , 1979 .

[31]  Charles F. Gettys,et al.  The best guess hypothesis in multistage inference , 1973 .

[32]  David A. Schum,et al.  Comments on the relationship between the impact and the reliability of evidence , 1971 .