Must Be A Tuesday

Follow Up Materials

Thank you for your interest in our study. If you have questions, comments, or interest in collaborating, please get in touch.

Study Overview

Must Be A Tuesday: Affect, Attribution, and Geographic Variability in Equity-Oriented Visualizations of Population Health Disparities

Collaboration with Lace Padilla, testing equitable data design techniques for population mortality charts.

Abstract

This study examines the impacts of public health communications visualizing risk disparities between racial and other social groups. It compares the effects of traditional bar charts to an alternative design emphasizing geographic variability with differing annotations and jitter plots. Whereas both visualization designs increased perceived vulnerability, behavioral intent, and policy support, the geo-emphasized charts were significantly more effective in reducing personal attribution biases. The findings also reveal emotionally taxing experiences for chart viewers from marginalized communities. This work suggests a need for strategic reevaluation of visual communication tools in public health to enhance understanding and engagement without reinforcing stereotypes or emotional distress.

Preprint
'Must Be a Tuesday': Affect, Attribution, and Geographic Variability in Equity-Oriented Visualizations of Population Health Disparities

Supplement
MBAT Data, Analysis, Supplemental Material

Talk Recording

Related Research

Dispersion vs Disparity: Hiding Variability Can Encourage Stereotyping When Visualizing Social Outcomes

Collaboration with Cindy Xiong Bearfield, exploring the impact of variability on attribution and stereotypes.

Research Paper
Dispersion vs Disparity: Hiding Variability Can Encourage Stereotyping When Visualizing Social Outcomes

Nightingale
Unfair Comparisons: How Visualizing Social Inequality Can Make It Worse

Study Details
Dispersion vs Disparity Research Project

Motivation
What Can Go Wrong? Deficit Thinking in Dataviz A collaboration with Pieta Blakely

VIS Talk
Dispersion vs Disparity Presentation for IEEE VIS 2022

Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization

Collaboration with Cindy Xiong Bearfield, exploring how social normative influences are triggered by charts.

Research Paper
Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization

Nightingale
Divisive Dataviz: How Political Data Journalism Divides Our Democracy

Study Details
Polarizing Political Polls Research Project

Background
Through a Partisan Lens: How Prior Political Beliefs Override Information.

VIS Talk
Polarizing Political Polls IEEE VIS 2023 Talk

Miscellaneous Related Writing

Sketching Sketchy Bar Charts Understanding how viewers underestimate variability when viewing bar charts of averages.

When is eleven scarier than twelve? Understanding perceptions of relative health risk.

Read the room. The 'ensemble effect' helps explain why Jitter Plots feel so intuitive.

Related Talks

Equitable Epidemiology

3iap Workshop
Equitable Epidemiology: Deep Dive Workshops for Public Health Communicators In these deep-dive workshops, we’ll seek to motivate an elevated duty-of-care for public health data communication, cover techniques for identifying prevalent risks in messaging, and propose alternative, evidence-backed chart choices for common use cases for visualizing population health outcomes.