Health Knowledge

Usually we expect folks with direct experience on a topic to have greater knowledge about that topic.  Seems reasonable.  This survey, at least when it comes to health, suggests otherwise.  It finds "people with a family history of sodium-related diseases did not have more knowledge on the relationship between sodium consumption and risk of getting certain diseases than those with no history."

In other words, direct experience with sodium-based diseases did not lead to greater knowledge about the problems of sodium consumption.

If you're not into following links on suspicious blogs like this one, here's the key graph from the press release:

Researchers from North Carolina State University analyzed data collected from 489 consumers who participated in a quantitative Internet survey designed to gather knowledge and attitudes towards dietary sodium, sodium in foods, and health. The consumers were divided into two groups: group one, for those who had no family history, and group two, for those that did. Results showed that having a disease history did not increase the level of knowledge that excess sodium intake increases the risk of getting diseases.

This is kinda odd and interesting and a little bit scary.  Not that it's about sodium and salt, but if we broadly extend this to health in general it says a lot about what people know, or don't know, even when they're directly exposed to the problem through family.  You'd expect greater knowledge.  This raises some important questions and challenges for those in the health communication field when it comes to informing the public.  If even direct experience with a health problem doesn't help, how much can you expect a health campaign to succeed?

This has been reported extensively elsewhere (see here, for example), but lemme point out the Pew findings on who is aware, and unaware, of the recent gigantic health decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Who's clueless?  Survey says: young people. 

See the table below.  Among the youngest adults, 43 percent didn't know what the court decided.  As is the case with most forms of political knowledge, the accuracy somewhat increases with age and certainly the likelihood of saying "don't know" goes down.

Let's acknowledge that younger people are (1) less politically interested and (2) less interested specifically in health care given where they are in their life cycle and (3) are, yes, less politically interested.

Or, perhaps, they're less likely to guess?  There is research that suggests men are more willing to guess at a political knowledge question than women.  No evidence here of that.  Just making note of it.

Fruity Knowledge. Veggies Too.

Yes, this blog for four years has focused on political knowledge and especially the media's role in maintaining what people know.  Sometimes, though, you gotta go elsewhere for content, dipping into the obscure and the arcane.  Especially on slow news/academic days.

And that bring us to -- what Australians know about veggies and fruits.

Told ya.  Obscure.  Arcane.  According to this story:

A new survey of young Australians has found one in two don't know how many servings of fruit and vegetables to eat in a day, and even fewer know the serving sizes of common fruit and vegetables.

Yes, the survey of a whopping 106 college students found only 54 percent "knew the recommended daily amounts of fruit and vegetables."  This is the "first concrete evidence young Australians don't know their fruit and vegetable basics."

The boldface above, that's mine.  Concrete?  A survey of 106 college kids?  I'm not saying I don't believe the results, I'm saying the methodological problems in such a small, narrow sample are enough to make me want to skip my fruit and veggies for the day.  But there is some funny stuff here.  Read below.

Some participants estimated the serving size of grapes to be just one grape, and others estimated the serving size for carrots to be the equivalent of 20 carrots, when it is 20 grapes and half a medium-sized carrot (or half a cup of chopped carrot).

Wow.  I think we can all agree this qualifies as a major nutritional fail.  Again, I agree the results are probably accurate, that college kids are clueless on this, but the way they got there, with such a small (random?  hard to say) sample makes me wonder about just how "concrete" the results really are.

And thus ends our obscure, arcane, methodological moment.

What the Elderly Know ... about Gays

In my never-ending struggle to bring you obscure and perhaps overlooked studies about what people know, I bring you this one.  The lede:

A small but groundbreaking survey of seniors and caregivers at two facilities in the East Bay has revealed mostly positive attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender elders.

There are a few methodological issues here.  The surveys are of 92 caregivers and 64 elders.  That makes the margins of error at just over 9 for the larger sample and just over 11 for the smaller sample.  And some folks don't get the difference between a sample and a census.  Here's a line from the story:

Researchers acknowledged the survey likely doesn't reflect the full range of attitudes among staff members because it only represented 26 percent of the total 350-member workforce at the facilities who participated. 

Twenty-six percent, that's impressive.  The point is the sample size, not the proportion of the population.

There is an important finding:

Despite the low participation rate, responses did demonstrate that caregivers have little knowledge about how to deal with LGBT seniors or family members. Lavender Seniors will design training for administrators and front-line staff about bathing and other forms of personal assistance, as well as handling legal issues and communication with lesbian or gay partners of clients or their next of kin.

Science Knowledge

Like a lot of topics -- politics, health, adult beverages -- it's easy to make an argument on why it's important people know something about it.  The same goes for what people know about science.

There's plenty of evidence out there on how little Americans know.  Just look at the proportion of people who believe in Creationism, or doubt global climate change.  But this study (abstract here, pdf of full study here), published in Advances in Health Science Education, reviews previous work on the long-term retention of science information.  Here's a bit from the abstract:

The results of the review, in the general educational domain as well as in medical education, suggest that approximately two-third to three-fourth of knowledge will be retained after one year, with a further decrease to slightly below fifty percent in the next year.

In other words, knowledge decays.  Rapidly.  Unless, of course, you use it, but that wasn't really an aim of the studies reviewed here.

A number of the studies reviewed are more educational than aimed at the general public, such as how well students in medical school retain scientific information.  Still, there's something to be learned for the rest of us who happen not to be in med school. 

The authors do provide near the end some ways in which to enhance science knowledge, or at least its retention, mostly aimed at how to construct a course and curriculum. 

A Health Magazine, and Health Knowledge

Unfortunately I can't access the full article, but this abstract briefly describes a study to test whether a health promotion magazine would make people provided the magazine more health conscious.

Can I get a "duh" from the audience?

They got a company to allow them to provide the magazine to its employees.  An initial questionnaire measured pre-existing health knowledge.  Following the distribution of the mags, there was an increase in employee knowledge about sugars in "fat free" foods, the benefits of fish oil, and other health nutrition stuff. 

There's good news here.  Knowledge in the pre-test was already high, and it improved.  What's missing, of course, is a control group, but I think we can safely say that when the boss says here's a magazine we're gonna put in front of you, employees will learn something from it.

Eighty-seven percent said they read the mag and "showed enthusiasm for continued delivery."  Yup, but ask 'em if they'd actually pay for it and watch 87 become 7.

Race and Knowledge about Lung Cancer

In terms of what people know, it rarely gets more important than knowledge about health.  According to a study out this week:

Blacks were more likely than whites to have certain beliefs regarding fear and risk perception of lung cancer that may interfere with the prevention and treatment of the disease, according to new findings from the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey. 

So race matters, at least according to this study. This brief story even uses multivartiate analysis in a later graph, which for us methodology geeks is something of a treat.  In it, they find that blacks were more likely (than whites? non-blacks?) that it is hard to follow lung cancer recommendations and to avoid an evaluation of lung cancer because they were afraid of the process.

If you're into this, other versions of the story are available at the LATimes, WebMD, and a particularly good one at Science Daily.

In that latter one from Science Daily is an interesting observation:

Both black and white respondents greatly overestimated the percentage of lung cancer patients who survive 5 years or longer -- many said 50 percent when the true number is 15 percent.

I've always been fascinated not only by knowledge but also perceptions -- either of knowledge, or opinion distribution, or of reality.  We apparently tend to overestimate how many people survive lung cancer, and I suspect the reason is an optimism bias. We want to believe they survive longer, especially if we happen to engage in the behaviors that might logically lead to lung cancer.  Interesting stuff.

Health Knowledge Monday

A simple health knowledge quiz is available here.  Nothing fancy, this quiz, and no way to tell how other people did (which I think is vital for these kinds of things to really work).  Basically it's a health column using a quiz as a gimmick.  Still, it contains good info.

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Speaking of health knowledge, here's an interesting abstract that compares health recommendations from books written in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to advice today.  Fascinating idea.  Some books were right, even back then.  Some, less so.  My favorite:

Inconsistencies or discrepancies between historical and current health knowledge and recommendations will also be presented. For example of historical health knowledge that is inconsistent with current comes from Burkard, Chambers, & Maroney's 1936 book entitled Health by Doing, “Teachers and parents . . . know that the use of tobacco interferes with good attention and with learning.” This is inconsistent with indications from current neurology research that suggests that nicotine enhances mental alertness.

Ah well, even back then, you couldn't be perfect.

This is a neat idea, comparing recommendations long ago to today.  Too bad there aren't good surveys from that period of health knowledge.

Swine Flu Over? Hardly

Most Americans have no plans to get the swine flu shot and think the problem was overblown and magically gone away, according to a New York Times article based on a Harvard study.

Concern about the swine flu has dropped from 46 percent of Americans to 32 percent, according to the Havard poll.  In kinda good news from a PR standpoint, three-quarters of those polled said they had seen "public health advertising – including posters, billboards, web-based ads, television, or newspaper ads – that provides information about the importance of getting the H1N1 flu vaccine."  So the message got out, even if it didn't necessarily work.  Television was the dominant medium where people saw ads, web sites the lowest (though to be fair, the margin of error kicks in and makes it more or less a tie for the lowest spot).

Is the swine flu over?

Experts weren't surprised by the results, according to the NYT story.

“But that could all change overnight if we get a third wave in late February — and we still could,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of a Minnesota research center.  “That would make this half-time data, not end-of-the-game data.”

In other words, people are fickle and if the flu kicks up again, a bunch of folks will bitch because they really did intend on getting the shot and it's not really their fault and somehow, somewhere, Obama (or the media) is to blame.

And yeah, I got both my flu shots ages ago, further feeding my sense of immortality. So there.

What Kids Know ... about Cardiovascular Disease

Sometimes, I suppose, finding nothing is good news.

In a recent study, 4th and 5th graders in an urban and a suburban school were surveyed about what they knew about the risk factors of cardiovascular disease.  The kids scored a 77.5 percent "comprehension level," which I can't explain in detail because only the abstract is available.  The authors also report:

There was no statistically significant difference in the mean survey scores of urban and suburban schools (p=0.98). There was no statistically significant difference in survey scores based on how often the child had received previous education about risk factors (p<0.22). In addition, no correlation was found between survey score and where the child had received previous education (r<0.086).

What can we take from the info above?  First, they don't know how to report correlation coefficients.  That last one, r<0.086?  Just tell me the friggin correlation, such as r=.09, n.s.  We don't need false precision by going to the thousandth.  Second, it's not necessarily bad news to find nada.  No difference between urban and suburban kids, that's good.  But why would being educated about risk factors have no effect?  Easy.  Kids don't pay a lot of attention to that stuff, or whatever was presented in school was so basic that kids who didn't get it knew it anyway.  Sort of a good news-bad news result.

Oh, and the media?

Education regarding cardiovascular disease risk factors is currently being delivered to children via school, family, and the media.

In other words, kids seem to be getting the message through school and the media and that's an overall good thing.