Examining Auxiliary Verbs in a Salient Belief Elicitation

Objective: Salient belief elicitations (SBEs) measure beliefs toward a health behavior through open-ended questions, with the purpose of developing close-ended survey questions. Auxiliary verbs used in SBE questions often differ (eg, What are the top 3 reasons you would/should decide to have an abortion?). We tested how 2 auxiliary verbs function in a SBE assessing abortion in English and Spanish: would/decidíra and should/debería. Methods: We administered a SBE survey online (N = 175) and in-person (N = 72); in-person participants also participated in cognitive interviews to assess question interpretation. Participants were assigned to survey versions that included identical SBE questions aside from auxiliary verbs—would/decidíra versus should/debería. Data analysis included: (1) content analysis of survey responses to assess differences in responses by version and (2) thematic analysis of interview data focused on interpretations of would/decidíra and should/ debería. Results: Would/decidíra surveys generated more response categories. Similarly, cognitive interview findings suggest participants conceptualized would/decidíra as allowing for more options, while should/debería was thought to include only the most significant reasons/circumstances for abortion, potentially restricting participants’ responses. Conclusion: These findings have important measurement implications for researchers administering SBEs

Data Prophecy: Exploring the Effects of Belief Elicitation in Visual Analytics

Interactive visualizations are widely used in exploratory data analysis, but existing systems provide limited support for confirmatory analysis. We introduce PredictMe, a tool for belief-driven visual analysis, enabling users to draw and test their beliefs against data, as an alternative to data-driven exploration. PredictMe combines belief elicitation with traditional visualization interactions to support mixed analysis styles. In a comparative study, we investigated how these affordances impact participants' cognition. Results show that PredictMe prompts participants to incorporate their working knowledge more frequently in queries. Participants were more likely to attend to discrepancies between their mental models and the data. However, those same participants were also less likely to engage in interactions associated with exploration, and ultimately inspected fewer visualizations and made fewer discoveries. The results suggest that belief elicitation may moderate exploratory behaviors, instead nudging users to be more deliberate in their analysis. We discuss the implications for visualization design.