As health care becomes increasingly personalized to the needs and values of individual patients, informational interventions that aim to inform and debias consumer decision-making are likely to become important tools. In a randomized controlled experiment, we explore the effects of providing participants with published fact boxes on the benefits and harms of common cancer screening procedures. Female participants were surveyed about breast cancer screening by mammography, while male participants were surveyed about prostate cancer screening by prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing. For these screening procedures, we expect consumers to have overly optimistic prior beliefs about the benefits and harms. We find that participants update their beliefs about the net benefits of screening modestly, but we observe little change in their stated preferences to seek screening. Participants who scored higher on a numeracy test updated their beliefs about screening benefits more in response to the fact boxes than did participants who scored lower on the numeracy test.

随着医疗保健越来越符合个体患者的需求和价值观，旨在告知消费者决策并消除其偏见的信息干预措施可能会成为重要的工具。在一项随机对照实验中，我们探讨了向参与者提供已发表的事实框对常见癌症筛查程序的益处和危害的影响。女性参与者接受了乳房 X 线摄影筛查乳腺癌的调查，而男性参与者接受了前列腺特异性抗原 (PSA) 检测的前列腺癌筛查调查。对于这些筛选程序，我们希望消费者对益处和危害有过于乐观的先前信念。我们发现参与者会适度更新他们对筛查净收益的看法，但我们观察到他们陈述的寻求筛选的偏好几乎没有变化。在算术测试中得分较高的参与者比在算术测试中得分较低的参与者更能响应事实框更新他们对筛查益处的信念。