Percentages, graphs, personas: Communicating the risk of COVID-19

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-04-21 09:01

International

PHOTO: Pixabay

With the wealth of knowledge about COVID-19's risk factors, it's now possible to create personalised calculators of someone's chance of dying from the disease. But what's the best way to communicated that risk? UK researchers surveyed more than 5000 people to see how different formats were perceived, along with interviewing doctors and members of the public. When it came to numbers, expressing risk as a percentage seemed to be the clearest format, but it also made the risk seem the lowest. In contrast, expressing risk as “x out of 10,000” conveyed a higher sense of risk. As such, the team recommends using both formats for balance. Other recommendations from their findings include using linear scales to illustrate maximum risk, and creating "personas" of other people to help put their individual risk in context.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Personalised calculators to help present people with their own risk of dying from COVID-19 have been appearing online and in clinical services, but how should they present the numbers to people to help them understand and assess their own risk? In this study, by interviewing doctors and members of the public, and carrying out large online experiments, we produce a series of guidelines for communicators - from doctors to journalists.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research The Royal Society, Web page URL after publication

Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Cambridge, UK

Funder: This work was funded by the Winton Centre for Risk & Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, which is financed by a donation from the David & Claudia Harding Foundation.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.