Participants were presented with three risks: blindness, gum disease, and heart attack/stroke. In terms of the risk of eye damage, more than half of participants (51.9%) remembered something about it while more than one third of participants (32.7%) remembered everything about it. For the risk of gum disease, 46.2% of participants remembered everything about it. However, approximately one third of participants (30.8%) did not remember anything about the gum disease risk. 38.5% of participants remembered everything about the risk of stroke/heart attack and 32.7% of participants remembered something about it.
There was a significant positive correlation between the number of risks remembered and both the time spent examining the graph and the eye damage risk. The more participants spent time examining the graph and eye damage risk, the more they remembered the number of the risks in the report. There was also a significant negative correlation between understanding of test results and the time spent examining gum disease story. The more participants spent time examining the gum disease story the less they understood the test results. These results highlighted the value of including the graph and eye damage risk in the report and removing the gum disease risk. This was supported by focus groups data, and the fact that gum disease risk was not remembered by 30.8% of participants.
Using an experiential (case-studies) style of presentation, featuring people who had experienced eye damage, gum disease, and heart disease did not produce significantly different results from using a rational (fact-based) style of presentation for each health risk. However, the time spent examining the rational (fact-based) style was consistently slightly more than time spent examining the experiential (case-studies).
While participants tended to remember risks of gum disease and stroke/heart attack that were written using rational style they tended to remember the risk of eye damage if it was written using experiential style. However, there were no significant relationships between the time spent examining each of the rational and experiential style of the three risks and the memorisation of these risks. Therefore, the time spent examining a given risk appears to be unrelated to recall of that information, which was generally excellent. The major implication of the above analysis of how disease risk information is examined is that the way in which risks are presented appears to be unrelated to the memory of those elements. In other words, all formats appear to be equally effective. Following is a short summary of these results:
| Risks | Rational (Fact-based) | Experiential (Case-study) |
|---|---|---|
| Eye-damage | Spent more time Remembered less information | Spent less time Remembered more information |
| Gum disease | Spent more time Remembered more information | Spent less time Remembered less information |
| Heart disease | Spent more time Remembered more information | Spent less time Remembered less information |
| However, there were no significant relationships between the time spent and remembering information | ||
Using value-expressive style to describe risks of eye damage and heart disease produced significantly different results from using a utilitarian style of each problem. Participants spent more time examining the utilitarian styles of eye damage and heart disease. In terms of the risk of gum disease, there was no significant difference in describing the risk using value-expressive or utilitarian style. On the other hand, using a photograph that accompanies each of the three risks either described by value-expressive or utilitarian style did not produce significantly different results.
Participants tended to remember risks that were written using utilitarian style more than the same risks if they were written using value-expressive style. However, these differences were not significant. There were also no significant relationships between the time-spent examining each of the value-expressive and utilitarian style of the three risks and the memorisation of these risks. Therefore, the time spent examining a given risk appears to be unrelated to recall of that information. However, the more participants spent time examining a utilitarian-phrased risk the more they remembered it. Following is a short summary of these results:
| Risks | Utilitarian | Value-expressive |
|---|---|---|
| Eye-damage | Spent more time Remembered more information | Spent less time Remembered less information |
| Gum disease | Spent more time Remembered more information | Spent less time Remembered less information |
| Heart disease | Spent more time Remembered more information | Spent less time Remembered less information |
| However, there were no significant relationships between the time spent and remembering information | ||