Topic
Numeracy
About: Numeracy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6240 publications have been published within this topic receiving 114504 citations. The topic is also known as: mathematical literacy & numerical literacy.
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TL;DR: The development of an abbreviated version of the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) to measure patients' ability to read and understand health-related materials that can be used by health educators to identify individuals who require special assistance to achieve learning goals is described.
1,457 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that even highly educated participants have difficulty with relatively simple numeracy questions, thus replicating in part earlier studies that usual strategies for communicating numerical risk may be flawed.
Abstract: Background. Numeracy, how facile people are with basic probability and mathematical concepts, is associated with how people perceive health risks. Performance on simple numeracy problems has been poor among populations with little as well as more formal education. Here, we examine how highly educated participants performed on a general and an expanded numeracy scale. The latter was designed within the context of health risks. Method. A total of 463 men and women aged 40 and older completed a 3-item general and an expanded 7-item numeracy scale. The expanded scale assessed how well people 1) differentiate and perform simple mathematical operations on risk magnitudes using percentages and proportions, 2) convert percentages to proportions, 3) convert proportions to percentages, and 4) convert probabilities to proportions. Results. On average, 18% and 32% of participants correctly answered all of the general and expanded numeracy scale items. Approximately 16% to 20% incorrectly answered the most straightfor...
1,389 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that individuals with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity are not the most concerned about climate change and are the most culturally polarized, while those with the lowest degrees are concerned.
Abstract: Public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension and to limits on technical reasoning. However, evidence suggests that individuals with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity are not the most concerned about climate change and are the most culturally polarized.
1,325 citations
Book•
01 Sep 1993
1,172 citations
TL;DR: The goal was to understand how numeracy affects women's ability to gauge the benefit of mammography after receiving quantitative information, and to hypothesized that the ability to use quantitative risk information would be related to the level of numeracy.
Abstract: Background: Quantitative information about risks and benefits may be meaningful only to patients who have some facility with basic probability and numerical concepts, a construct called numeracy. O...
1,043 citations