Evaluating the use of sonification and music to support the communication of alcohol health risk to young people: Initial results

Abstract

The interdisciplinary research project, Using Sonification to COmmunicate public health Risk data (SCORe), aims to experimentally test how sonification, interactivity in combination with music, could increase the communicative potential of a visual presentation directed to young people and focused on health risk data of alcohol consumption. Specifically, we are studying how this type of presentation can support engagement with health information, and the effective interpretation and recall of data. In order to explore the possible influence of sound in understanding important health risk messages, a 3-arm pilot randomised control (participant-blinded) trial was designed. We compared a visual presentation augmented by sonification, music and interaction with a simple visual presentation and a visual presentation augmented by simple user interaction. This paper describes the most complex of the three health presentations (the audio-visual and interactive presentation) and presents initial findings that relate to this presentation only.