Tool to assess recognition and understanding of elements in Summary of Findings Table for health evidence synthesis: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Summary of Findings (SoF) tables concisely present the main findings of evidence synthesis of health evidence, but how users navigate it to understand and interpret the presented information is not clear. We quantified the interaction of medical students with an SoF table while answering a knowledge quiz. Read&Learn tool was used to measure the number of target and non-target table cells visited for each question and the time spent on these cells. Students positively identified target elements for quiz questions and answered simpler questions, but struggled with critical thinking and understanding study outcomes. The question on outcomes with the largest improvement post-intervention had the fewest correct answers, the longest interaction with table cells and the most opened cells before answering. Students spent a median of 72% of the time reading target table cells. A heatmap of the interactions showed that they were mostly answer-oriented. Further development of the tool and metrics is needed to use the tool and the metrics to study the cognitive processes during the assessment of health evidence.

Communicating evidence-based information on the effects of health interventions to various types of recipients – a qualitative study on the perception of formats of information among lay and professional audiences

“…When applying the latter approach, investigators tended to focus on exploring the consumer audience's preferences regarding single formats, such as plain language summary (PLS) in a study by Glenton et al [12] or summary of findings (SoF) tables in studies by Rosenbaum et al [10] and Matas et al [13], or compared the perception a few formats, such as in the studies by Buljan et al [14]. Moreover, most of them addressed either nonspecific [12] or professional audience [10].…”