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Biomedical subjects

Neil D Weinstein

Publications and source records attributed to Neil D Weinstein.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Formats for improving risk communication in medical tradeoff decisions.

To make treatment decisions, patients should consider not only a treatment option's potential consequences but also the probability of those consequences. Many laypeople, however, have difficulty using probability information. This Internet-based study (2,601 participants) examined a hypothetical medical tradeoff situation in which a treatment would decrease one risk but increase another. Accuracy was assessed in terms of the ability to determine correctly whether the treatment would increase or decrease the total risk. For these tradeoff problems, accuracy was greater when the following occurred: (1) the amount of cognitive effort required to evaluate the tradeoff was reduced; (2) probability information was presented as a graphical display rather than as text only; and (3) information was presented as percentages rather than as frequencies (n in 100). These findings provide suggestions of ways to present risk probabilities that may help patients understand their treatment options.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Accuracy and optimism in smokers' beliefs about quitting.

Data collected in two nationwide surveys (N=361 and N=788) provide insight into the extent to which smokers recognize the ease of addiction and the difficulty of quitting. Smokers generally acknowledge that addiction occurs quickly and that smokers have considerable difficulty quitting. Youth smokers, however, generally believe that they would have less difficulty than other smokers and that they are less addicted than the average smoker. Adult smokers tend to say they are not different from other smokers in addiction or ability to quit. Nevertheless, both youth and adult smokers who want to quit greatly overestimate the likelihood that they will succeed in the coming year. Few smokers think about how long they will smoke when they first begin, and the reluctance to believe that they could have serious difficulty quitting may help in the progression from experimental to established smoker.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Risk perceptions and their relation to risk behavior.

BACKGROUND: Because risk perceptions can affect protective behavior and protective behavior can affect risk perceptions, the relations between these 2 constructs are complex and incorrect tests often lead to invalid conclusions. PURPOSE: To discuss and carry out appropriate tests of 3 easily confused hypotheses: (a). the behavior motivation hypothesis (perceptions of personal risk cause people to take protective action), (b). the risk reappraisal hypothesis (when people take actions thought to be effective, they lower their risk perceptions), and (c). the accuracy hypothesis (risk perceptions accurately reflect risk behavior). METHODS: Longitudinal study with an initial interview just after the Lyme disease vaccine was made publicly available and a follow-up interview 18 months later. Random sample of adult homeowners (N = 745) in 3 northeastern U.S. counties with high Lyme disease incidence. Lyme disease vaccination behavior and risk perception were assessed. RESULTS: All 3 hypotheses were supported. Participants with higher initial risk perceptions were much more likely than those with lower risk perceptions to get vaccinated against Lyme disease (OR = 5.81, 95% CI 2.63-12.82, p <.001). Being vaccinated led to a reduction in risk perceptions, chi2(1, N = 745) = 30.90, p <.001, and people vaccinated correctly believed that their risk of future infection was lower than that of people not vaccinated (OR =.44, 95% CI.21-.91, p <.05). CONCLUSIONS: The behavior motivation hypothesis was supported in this longitudinal study, but the opposite conclusion (i.e., that higher risk led to less protective behavior) would have been drawn from an incorrect test based only on cross-sectional data. Health researchers should take care in formulating and testing risk-perception-behavior hypotheses.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Colon cancer: risk perceptions and risk communication.

Members of a health maintenance organization (N=353) interacted with a computer program that provided personalized information about their risk of developing colon cancer in the next 20 years. Prior to computer feedback, most people greatly overestimated their numerical, absolute risk (chances per 1000) and also overestimated their relative risk compared to peers (e.g., "above average"). Their relative risk estimates were correlated with several risk factors, whereas their absolute risk estimates were not, suggesting that assessing individual risk perceptions with numerical, absolute risk scales may provide misleading information about what people believe. Computer feedback improved the accuracy of mean risk estimates, but about half of participants did not accept the personalized feedback as correct. In fact, correlations between actual and perceived risk were no greater among participants who received risk scores than among those who did not. Three possible explanations for resistance to lower-than-expected risk feedback are considered.

Colonic Neoplasms↗