Are Pictures Worth a Thousand Words: A Pilot Randomized Trial of Visual Cues to Improve Speed of Completion and Comprehension of Three Surveys for Older Adults

Background and Aims: When conducting surveys with older adults, it is important that participants have clear comprehension of the questions being asked. It is also important that survey items can be administered efficiently. This paper investigates the effect of providing visual cues to aid participant understanding and speed of completion of three types of health surveys. Methods: Design - Pilot randomized controlled trial (n=12) of participants assigned to a visual cues (intervention) or no visual cues (control) group with unblinded outcome assessment using time taken to complete survey and question comprehension as outcome measures. Results: Although participants from both groups did not report difficulty in understanding or remembering each question, the visual cues group were able to complete the surveys in significantly less time and with significantly fewer errors in comprehension than the no cues group. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that visual cues improved speed of survey completion and patient comprehension of survey items. This investigation suggests the use of visual cues may enhance efficiency and reduce labor costs in survey related research with the elderly and potentially reduce burden on participants. Furthermore, this may result in higher validity of questionnaires due to improved comprehension. The findings of this pilot study were unexpectedly definitive on their own merit such that a larger investigation was deemed to be unwarranted for the purpose of addressing the research aims.