Risk communication interventions may be most productive if they include individual risk estimates in the discussion between professional and patient. Patient decisions about treatment appear more amenable to change by these interventions than attendance for screening or modification of risky behavior.

The published literature has consistently demonstrated that relative risk formats produce more favorable evaluations of treatments than absolute risk or number needed to treat formats. However, the effects are heterogeneous and seem to be moderated by key differences between the methodologies used.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractObjective: Health messages can be framed in terms of the benefits of adopting a recommendation (gain-frame) or the costs of not adopting a recommendation (loss-frame). In recent years research has demonstrated that the relative persuasiveness of gain-and lossframes can depend upon a variety of dispositional factors. This paper aims to synthesize this growing literature to develop our understanding of the moderators of framing.Methods: A systematic review of published literature on gain-and loss-framing was therefore conducted. Articles were retrieved that tested the interaction between framing and moderators representing individual differences in how people are pre-disposed to think, feel and behave. The significance and direction of framing main effects and interactions were noted and effect size data extracted where available.Results: A total of 47 articles were retrieved published between January 1990 and September 2011 that reported on 50 unique experiments testing 23 different moderators.Significant interactions with typically small to medium simple main effect sizes were found in 37 of the 50 studies. Consistent interactions were found for factors such as ambivalence, approach-avoidance motivation, regulatory focus, need for cognition, and self-efficacy beliefs. Less consistent effects were found for perceived riskiness of activity, issue involvement and perceived susceptibility/ severity.Conclusions: The relative effectiveness of gain-or loss-framed messages can depend upon the disposition of the message recipient. Tailoring the frame to the individual therefore has the potential to maximize message persuasiveness. For the past 20 years or so a great deal of research has investigated the persuasive impact of these two types of message frames. For example, in one of the earliest studies Meyerowitz and Chaiken (1987) found that a loss-frame was more persuasive than a gainframe at encouraging women to attend their mammography appointment. However, as the body of research grew, it soon became apparent that loss-frames were not always more persuasive than gain-frames. For example, gain-frames were more persuasive in promoting the benefits of using sunscreen (Rothman, Salovey, Antone, Keough, & Martin, 1993).Attention therefore turned to identifying variables that might moderate framing effects and one factor to emerge was the perceived riskiness or function of the health behaviour (Rothman & Salovey, 1997). Rothman and Salovey proposed that people will be more responsive to ...

Objectives: To compare how people communicate about eating disorders on two popular social media platforms – Twitter and Tumblr.Materials and Methods: Thematic analysis was conducted to characterize the types of communications posted, and a content analysis was undertaken of between-platform differences.Results: Three types of content (pro-ana, anti-ana, and pro-recovery) were posted on each platform. Overall, across both platforms, extreme pro-ana posts were in the minority compared to anti-ana and pro-recovery. Pro-ana posts (including ‘thinspiration’) were more common on Twitter than Tumblr, whereas anti-ana and pro-recovery posts were more common on Tumblr.Conclusion: The findings have implications for future research and health care relating to the treatment and prevention of eating disorders. Developers of future interventions targeting negative pro-ana content should remain aware of the need to avoid any detrimental impact on positive online support.

Discussing risks and benefits of treatments or care options is becoming an increasingly important part of modern health care. This paper reviews the literature about manipulations of risk and benefit information in the clinical setting. There is a paucity of evidence in this field, particularly when examining specific manipulations. Only three categories of manipulation had three or more studies. The available evidence shows that the way information is presented can have significant effects on decisions made. The largest effects are evident when relative risk information is presented, as compared with absolute risk data. In addition, "loss framing" is more effective in influencing screening uptake behaviors than "gain framing" (odds ratio 1.18 [95% confidence interval 1.01-1.38]). There is also a pattern of evidence from studies comparing simpler with more complex information, more data with less, and those comparing numerical with verbal descriptions of risks. These studies suggest that providing more information, and which is more understandable to the patient, is associated with improved patient knowledge and a greater wariness to take treatments or participate in trials. These findings can contribute to efforts to improve communication between professionals and patients.