Public Health Decision-Making Using Uncertainty Displays

High rates of chronic disease have created challenges for public health decision-makers in resource allocation. Decision tools designed to support public health professionals can help address these challenges. This study aims to investigate the impact of different uncertainty visualization techniques on user perceptions. The study was designed for the purpose of supporting the development of CDPoRT, a chronic disease risk prediction tool. Participants performed a fictional recourse allocation decision-making task with map-based visualizations, tables with and without uncertainty data, and a table with uncertainty explanation. The findings show that CDPoRT’s user interface may benefit from the inclusion of an overlay map to visualize the rate and uncertainty information for public health resource allocation decisions. Future research can consider the development of interactive features to facilitate comparisons between multiple geographical regions and simulate interventions.