Perceived readability, understandability, and hazardousness of prescription drug warning labels as a function of icon, font size, and color

Current standards on warning design recommend including icons on various product labels to increase saliency and reinforce meaning. In order to examine if icons are understandable and salient, Experiment 1 consisted of a sample of 489 undergraduate students rating 43 pharmaceutical pictorials with regards to understandability, carefulness, likelihood of injury, severity of injury, and saliency. The icons "Shake well," "Poison," .. "should be taken with plenty of water," "for headaches," "do not drink alcoholic beverages," and "for the ear" met the ISO 67% comprehension criteria. In a subsequent study, a sample of 51 undergraduates rated 24 pharmaceutical labels varying in colors, icon, and verbal content across understandability, carefullness, likelihood of injury, readability, severity of injury, and saliency. An icon with a slash through it was rated higher across all dependent variables. Red was rated highest along the injury variables, whereas yellow was rated highest in readability and understandability. Furthermore, text that was shortened and in larger print, yet connoted the same meaning was rated higher across all dependent measures. Implications for warning design are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year

1999

Author dc:creator

• McCafferty, Melissa Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• N. Clayton Silver

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/rtds/978

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:rtds-1977