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The Role of Numeracy and Intelligence in Health‐Risk Estimation and Medical Data Interpretation
Author(s) -
Låg Torstein,
Bauger Lars,
Lindberg Martin,
Friborg Oddgeir
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/bdm.1788
Subject(s) - numeracy , psychology , scale (ratio) , construct (python library) , wechsler adult intelligence scale , cognition , variance (accounting) , health and retirement study , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , gerontology , medicine , literacy , computer science , psychiatry , pedagogy , physics , accounting , quantum mechanics , programming language , business
Despite ample evidence that numeracy is an important influence on patient understanding and use of health‐related information, there is a dearth of studies examining the concept's relationship to other individual differences measures that may underlie complex judgments in the health domain. In this study, we compared the relative contributions of selected extant numeracy measures and general intelligence and other measures to varied judgment and decision‐making outcomes. Two hundred participants completed numeracy items, subscales of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales, the need for cognition scale, and four relevant outcome measures including risk estimation and medical data interpretation. A numeracy scale constructed using item response and confirmatory factor analyses was consistently the strongest predictor across all outcome measures and accounted for unique variance over and above general intelligence. The results support the concept of numeracy as an independent construct that merits consideration in patient communication. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.