Personalized risk communication for personalized risk assessment: Real world assessment of knowledge and motivation for six mortality risk measures from an online life expectancy calculator

Figures & data

Figure 1. Life expectancy calculator outcome metrics at www.projectbiglife.ca.

Table 1. Baseline characteristics of Project Big Life users, February 13 to April 12, 2015.

	Survey respondents % (n = 317)	Nonrespondents % (n = 9,506)
Sociodemographics
Age group, years
20–39	17.9	42.9
40–59	45.1	37.7
60–80	37.9	19.5
Sex
Male	52.2	52.2
Female	47.8	47.8
Nationality
Canadian	69.1	28.9
Non-Canadian	30.0	68.7
Missing	1.0*	2.4
Neighborhood support
High	5.6	11.8
Moderate	29.2	33.7
Low	11.9	24.1
Missing	53.3	30.4
Health behaviors
Smoking status
Smoker	10.4	19.0
Former smoker	33.1	25.1
Nonsmoker	55.8	54.7
Missing	0.6*	1.2
Physical activity
Inactive	15.4	22.3
Moderately active	21.9	17.8
Active	62.1	60.0
Missing	0	0
Diet
Very poor diet	14.7	22.1
Poor diet	23.8	23.1
Fair diet	31.7	31.4
Adequate diet	29.8	23.4
Missing	0	0
Alcohol consumption
Heavy drinker	10.4	17.2
Moderate drinker	26.8	18.0
Nondrinker	61.8	63.4
Missing	1.0*	1.4
Project Big Life metrics
Health age^†
Better than population average	87.1	74.4
Worse than population average	12.9	25.6
Leading health behavior risk
Smoking	19.2	24.1
Physical activity	7.6	10.0
Diet	71.6	63.7
Alcohol	0	0.1
None	1.6*	2.2

*Responses suppressed from remaining tables due to the small cell size.

^†Comparison to age- and sex-specific population average.

Table 2. Percentage of survey respondents who found the risk measures informative or motivational.

	Rated highly informative* % (95% CI)	Rated highly motivational* % (95% CI)
Overall	82.3 (77.6, 86.3)	80.2 (75.4, 84.5)
Sociodemographics
Age group, years
20–39	86.5 (74.2, 94.4)	83.3 (70.7, 92.1)
40–59	83.8 (76.7, 89.4)	83.2 (76.1, 88.9)
60–80	79.2 (70.8, 86.0)	75.6 (66.9, 83.0)
Sex
Male	80.5 (72.2, 87.2)	79.8 (71.5, 86.6)
Female	83.7 (77.7, 88.6)	80.7 (74.5, 86.0)
Nationality
Canadian	85.4 (80.0, 89.8)	81.3 (75.5, 86.2)
Non-Canadian	76.1 (66.1, 84.4)	77.7 (67.9, 85.6)
Neighborhood support
High	82.4 (56.6, 96.2)	64.7 (38.3, 85.8)
Moderate	81.7 (72.4, 89.0)	84.9 (76.0, 91.5)
Low	77.8 (60.8, 89.9)	80.6 (64.0, 91.8)
Missing	83.5 (77.1, 88.8)	80.0 (73.2, 85.7)
Health behaviors
Smoking status
Smoker	72.7 (54.5, 86.7)	68.8 (50.0, 83.9)
Former smoker	81.9 (73.2, 88.7)	79.0 (70.0, 86.4)
Nonsmoker	85.1 (78.9, 90.0)	83.6 (77.3, 88.7)
Physical activity
Inactive	75.0 (60.4, 86.4)	75.5 (61.1, 86.7)
Moderately active	82.4 (71.2, 90.5)	74.3 (62.4, 84.0)
Very active	84.3 (78.5, 89.1)	83.8 (77.8, 88.6)
Diet
Very poor diet	89.1 (76.4, 96.4)	89.1 (76.4, 96.4)
Poor diet	76.0 (64.7, 85.1)	68.4 (56.7, 78.6)
Fair diet	79.2 (70.0, 86.6)	80.2 (71.1, 87.5)
Adequate diet	87.2 (78.8, 93.2)	85.3 (76.5, 91.7)
Alcohol consumption
Heavy drinker	87.9 (71.8, 96.6)	81.8 (64.5, 93.0)
Moderate drinker	82.4 (72.6, 89.8)	78.8 (68.6, 86.9)
Nondrinker	81.3 (75.1, 86.6)	80.5 (74.2, 85.8)
Project Big Life metrics
Health age^†
Better than population average	83.5 (78.6, 87.7)	82.5 (77.5, 86.8)
Worse than population average	75.6 (59.7, 87.6)	65.9 (49.4, 79.9)
Leading health behavior risk
Smoking	77.0 (64.5, 86.8)	71.7 (58.6, 82.5)
Physical activity	79.2 (57.8, 92.9)	75.0 (53.3, 90.2)
Diet	84.4 (78.9, 88.9)	83.7 (78.2, 88.3)

^† Abbreviations: CI = confidence interval.

*Rating of five or six on the six-point scale.

^†Comparison to age- and sex-specific Canadian population average.

Table 3. Cross-tabulation of the percentage of respondents who found the risk communication metrics highly informative or highly motivating by the number of other risk communication metrics they found informative or motivational.

Number of other metrics ranked high	Life expectancy % high (5&6)	Impact of risk factors % high (5&6)	Health age % high (5&6)	Big Life button % high (5&6)	Will you live to see it? % high (5&6)	Detailed report % high (5&6)
Informative
0	4.6	5.2	7.9	2.3	4.8	3.2
1	19.4	9.7	18.0	10.0	14.5	6.5
2	20.0	18.7	22.8	20.0	11.3	17.2
3	15.4	17.9	13.8	17.7	18.6	9.7
4	21.1	23.1	19.6	23.9	23.4	26.9
5	19.4	25.4	18.0	26.2	27.4	36.6
Motivational
0	7.0	5.1	3.2	1.6	3.2	2.1
1	11.0	9.7	10.6	8.2	1.6	5.2
2	20.0	19.5	20.1	19.7	12.7	2.1
3	18.5	19.5	18.0	24.6	18.3	12.4
4	15.5	17.4	18.5	45.9	19.8	20.6
5	28.0	28.7	29.6	38.7	44.4	57.7

Figure 2. Percentage of respondents who rated the health metric as highly informative or highly motivating, by general health status and individual health behaviors.

Table 4. Percentage of respondents interested in sharing any measure with others.

	High willingness to share with clinician* % (95% CI)	High willingness to share socially* % (95% CI)
Overall	44.4 (36.07, 52.67)	38.2 (29.01, 47.41)
Sociodemographics
Age group, years
20–39	48.1 (34.0, 62.4)	52.3 (36.7, 67.5)
40–59	47.1 (38.7, 55.8)	40.0 (31.3, 49.1)
60–80	40.2 (31.2, 49.6)	30.3 (21.8, 39.8)
Sex
Male	47.5 (38.2, 56.9)	33.3 (24.7, 42.9)
Female	42.9 (35.8, 50.3)	41.3 (33.8, 49.2)
Nationality
Canadian	44.1 (37.3, 51.1)	37.8 (30.8, 45.2)
Non-Canadian	45.3 (35.0, 55.8)	38.9 (28.8, 49.7)
Neighborhood support
High	29.4 (10.3, 56.0)	38.5 (13.9, 68.4)
Moderate	40.2 (30.1, 51.0)	38.4 (28.1, 49.5)
Low	44.7 (28.6, 61.7)	30.6 (16.3, 48.1)
Missing	48.2 (40.3, 56.1)	40.0 (32.0, 48.5)
Health behaviors
Smoking status
Smoker	53.1 (34.7, 70.9)	40.7 (22.4, 61.2)
Former smoker	47.1 (37.1, 57.2)	37.2 (27.5, 47.8)
Nonsmoker	41.6 (34.2, 49.3)	38.7 (31.0, 46.9)
Physical activity
Inactive	46.8 (32.1, 61.9)	28.9 (16.4, 44.3)
Moderately active	42.4 (30.3, 55.2)	40.4 (27.6, 54.2)
Active	44.9 (37.8, 52.1)	39.8 (32.5, 47.4)
Diet
Very poor diet	44.7 (30.2, 59.9)	45.2 (29.8, 61.3)
Poor diet	37.0 (26.0, 49.1)	33.3 (22.4, 45.7)
Fair diet	43.4 (33.5, 53.8)	34.1 (24.3, 45.0)
Adequate diet	51.1 (40.4, 61.7)	43.2 (32.2, 54.7)
Alcohol consumption
Heavy drinker	45.5 (28.1, 63.6)	24.1 (10.3, 43.5)
Moderate drinker	41.0 (30.3, 52.3)	45.3 (33.8, 57.3)
Nondrinker	45.3 (38.0, 52.6)	36.8 (29.6, 44.5)
Project Big Life metrics
Health age^†
Better than population average	45.7 (39.7, 51.9)	38.9 (32.8, 45.4)
Worse than population average	37.5 (22.7, 54.2)	32.4 (17.4, 50.5)
Leading health behavior risk
Smoking	45.8 (32.7, 59.2)	38.9 (25.9, 53.1)
Physical activity	29.2 (12.6, 51.1)	39.9 (33.0, 47.1)
Diet	46.6 (39.9, 53.4)	22.7 (7.8, 45.4)

Abbreviations: CI = confidence interval.

*Rating of five or six on the six-point scale.

^†Comparison to age- and sex-specific Canadian population average.