Making Data Sing: Talking About Research to a Lay Audience

September 28, 2011

Housekeeping
Questions
Please submit your questions via the chat features. We will have about 15 mins for Q&A at the end of the webinar.

Webinar / Slide Deck Archive:

An archive of the webinar and the slide deck will be posted by Oct 4 here: www.rwjfleaders.org/resources

Presenters Gretchen Wright, Vice President

PR Solutions

Kurt Voelker, Chief Technology Officer

Forum One Communications

 Insufficiently concerned with accuracy

Superficial
Sensationalist

Focused on controversy and tension

Ignorant

Unethical and willing to do anything to get the story

Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientists Guide to Talking to the Public, Cornelia Dean, Harvard University Press, 2009

 Boring

Hair-splitting
Caveating things to death

Overly interested in process

Unable to articulate a bottom line or distinguish the forest for the trees Users of unintelligible jargon
Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientists Guide to Talking to the Public, Cornelia Dean, Harvard University Press, 2009

What Does All This Data Mean? 22.34%

Risk factor of 32.55%

I dont understand that statistics stuff.

- John Zarrella, CNN Miami correspondent, covering NASA

December 3, 2008

Outline of a News Article Lead (or lede) the most important fact or finding The answers to the most important questions why the finding matters Material that explains and amplifies the lead Background/supporting material methodology, history of the issue

Methodology
SPSS Windows (version 18.0) was used for data management and statistical analysis. Descriptive statistics on all variables (e.g., frequencies, means, standard deviation), chi-square analyses for categorical variables, and t-test or ANOVA for continuous variables were calculated. This report represents a trend and best predictor analysis of the first and second years of data. A descriptive analysis of the overall first and second years of data is presented in this report. The descriptive analysis for the first year (by round) of data is available in a previously published report.4 An older trend analysis from the first year of data collection (rounds 1 to 4) was contrasted with a trend analysis from the second year (rounds 5 to 8). Trend analyses included likelihood ratio tests of overall differences between rounds, tests of deviation from linearity, and Wald chi-square tests of polynomial trend components (linear, quadratic, and cubic). In addition, Wald chi-square tests of adjacent rounds were conducted within year. Detailed rates for cross-classified verbal abuse and physical violence categories are presented for each round, each year, and overall. Within each seasonal quarter and overall, consecutive years were compared on rates for cross-classified verbal abuse and physical violence categories (via z-tests for independently sampled proportions).

Methodology

The study is based on quarterly surveys of a total of 3,211 emergency nurses across the country from May 2009 to February 2010. ENA collected the data at three-month intervals in order to assess whether there were fluctuations in violence over the course of a year. The study found that rates of abuse remained constant over time.

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Tell a Story

Heart Failure Program Has Reduced Readmissions by 30 Percent

December 3, 2008

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Since July, Mochun Li has been hospitalized at the U.C.S.F. Medical Center three times. On some nights, Ms. Li had struggled so hard to breathe that she had not been able to sleep

Now Ms. Li, 89, is at home and breathing more easily, thanks in part to the heart failure program at the University of California.

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The hospital says the program has saved Medicare at least $1 million a year.

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Tell a Story

Peanut ball reducing C-section rate.

Those who used the ball decreased the first stage of labor by nearly 90 minutes and the second stage by 23 minutes compared with a control group that did not use the ball.

The C-section rate for the group of women who used the ball was 13 percentage points less than for the group that did not use the peanut ball.

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they recruited two groups of patients to test the theory those who would be given peanut balls during appropriate stages of labor and those without.

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Tell A Story

September 30, 2011

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Hospitalized Kids May Receive Up to 35 Meds a Week

Some children, especially those with rare conditions, receive many different drugs while in the hospital, a new study finds.

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On the first day in childrens hospitals, patients younger than 1 year at the 90th percentile of daily medication use received 11 drugs and those 1 year or older received 13 drugs. In general hospitals, patients younger than 1 year had received 22 drugs and patients 1 year and older had received 28 drugs.

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Who Am I Really Talking To? Caregivers

Health Care Providers

Hospital Administrators

Policy Makers
Possible patients

Questions from Patients/Caregivers

What does this mean for my health? What does this mean for my health care? Are there behaviors I should change? Are there warning signs I should look out for?

Are there questions I should be asking my health care providers?

Are there tests or screenings I should be getting?

Are there tests or screenings I should be getting more often?

Is there information I should be sharing with my health care provider?

Questions from Policy Makers What does this mean for public health?

Does this have ramifications for public policy? Could this lower health care costs?
Could this raise health care costs?

Is there more research that needs to be done?

Questions from Hospital Administrators Are there protocols or procedures we should change? Does this have cost ramifications?

Is there a replicable model for change?

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ARE THERE INCORRECT CONCLUSIONS PEOPLE MIGHT DRAW?

Know Your Key Findings!

7x1=0 3x3=2

Try to Avoid Acronyms

IOM
NIH JCAHO CDC

NICU
AHIP Any organizational acronyms

Things People Remember

Its the first systematic effort to have children evaluate their hospital care.
This is the most comprehensive survey to date on the health behaviors of pregnant women in the U.S.

Types of Words to Avoid Meta-analysis

Hyperbilirubinemia
DVT

Myocardial infarction
basically, anything youd hear during the diagnostic teams scenes in House.

Suggested Reading Making Data Talk: Communicating Public Health Data to the Public, Policy Makers, and the Press
- David Nelson, Bradford Hesse, Robert Coyle

Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientists Guide to Talking to the Public

- Cornelia Dean

ways to tell your story with data

Speak with Numbers

Reveal Change

http://visitmix.com/labs/descry/theobesityepidemic/

http://visitmix.com/labs/descry/theobesityepidemic/

Focus on the Story

SO, WHATS THE TWEETABLE VERSION?

DESPITE FINANCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES, SOME SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE SUCCEEDING.

Provide Context

Walmart Revenue $405

$300 Cost to raise 1 Billion people out of extreme poverty

Worldwide cost of financial crisis

$11,900
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NmiUsdn7qRk&vq=medium#t=373

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NmiUsdn7qRk&vq=medium#t=373

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NmiUsdn7qRk&vq=medium#t=373

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=NmiUsdn7qRk&vq=medium#t=373

Let Users Explore, Discover, and CONTROL.

http://www.ge.com/visualization/appliances_energyuse/index.html

Let Users Tell Your Story

http://data.worldbank.org

And of course, you can always Tell your data story

Sources for Daily Data Inspiration

Information is Beautiful http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

Flowing Data http://www.flowingdata.com

Find Your Story

Put the Players Together

story teller (Thats You!) + visual designer engineer + Compelling Online Data Story

Questions & Answers

Wrap Up
Next webinar.

PowerPoints with Punch

Coming on October 26, 2011 2:00 3:00pm
Presented by: McK