Table 1

Comparison of our checklist with other guidance

Guidance	Purpose	Comparison with our checklist
The Conference On Guideline Standardisation checklist for reporting clinical practice guidelines47	The checklist is intended to minimise the quality defects that arise from failure to include essential information and to promote development of recommendation statements that are more easily implemented.	Focus is on content of a full guideline report rather than on presentation of information. It does not include guidance for how to present information about benefits and harms. It is consistent with our checklist for the items that overlap. Some of the 18 items are outside of the scope of our checklist.
DISCERN instrument for judging the quality of written consumer health information on treatment choices48	To enable patients and information providers to judge the quality of written information about treatment choices and to facilitate the production of new, high-quality, evidence-based consumer health information.	There is some overlap, but the focus is on content of information for patients and the public rather than on presentation of that information; and the checklist is presented as an instrument for assessing the quality of information rather than as a guide for preparing it.
Ensuring Quality Information for Patients tool49	To provide a practical measure of the presentation quality for all types of written healthcare information.	There is some overlap, but it does not address how to present evidence-based information about the effects of interventions. It includes some relevant suggestions that we have not included:
		Use short sentences
		Personally address the reader
		Be respectful
		Include easy-to-understand illustrations.
Evidence-based risk communication50	Key findings to inform best practice from a systematic review of the comparative effectiveness of methods of communicating probabilistic information to patients who maximise their cognitive and behavioural outcomes.	The findings from this systematic review are largely consistent with our recommendations for how to help people understand the size of effects. It includes some suggestions that we have not:
		Add bar graphs or icon arrays to natural frequencies or event rates.
		Consider the use of icon arrays with smaller numerators and bar graphs with larger numerators.
		Place a patient’s risk in context by using comparative risks of other events.
		Realise that positive framing (stating benefits rather than harms) increases acceptance of therapies.
GRADE guidelines38	To provide guidance for use of the GRADE* system of rating the certainty of evidence and grading the strength of recommendations in systematic reviews, health technology assessments and clinical practice guidelines.	This is a series of articles that provide detailed guidance for people preparing systematic reviews, health technology assessments, or guidelines. We have helped to develop this guidance and have drawn on it. Our checklist is consistent with GRADE guidance for summary of finding tables and communicating information about uncertainty.
GRADE guidelines38	International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS) Patient Decision Aid User Checklist51 52		To provide a set of quality criteria for patient decision aids.	Many of the items in the IPDAS checklist overlap with our checklist. It also includes items that are outside of the scope of our checklist (eg, decision aids for tests, helping users to clarify their values and evaluation of decision aids) as well as some items that are within our scope, which we have not included. They are reformulated here as guidance:
Use visual diagrams to show the probabilities (eg, faces, stick figures or bar charts).
Allow patients to select a way of viewing the probabilities (eg, words, numbers, diagrams).
Present probabilities using both positive and negative frames (eg, showing both survival and death rates).
Describe the features of options to help patients imagine what it is like to experience their physical, emotional and social effects.
Provide stories of other patients’ experiences.
Identify the reading level at which it is written and the formula (method) used to determine the level.
Provide ways to help patients understand information other than reading (eg, audio, video or in-person discussion).
Risk and uncertainty communication53	Explores the major issues in communicating risk assessments arising from statistical analysis and concludes with a set of recommendations.	Largely consistent with our checklist. Includes a set of recommendations about visualisations, such as:
		Illuminate graphics with words and numbers.
		Design graphics to allow part-to-whole comparisons on an appropriate scale.
		Helpful narrative labels are important.
		Be cautious about interactivity and animations.
		Avoid chart junk.
		Most importantly, assess the needs of the audience, experiment, test and iterate towards a final design.
US National Standards for the Certification of Patient Decision Aids54	To provide criteria for a potential decision aid certification process in the USA	Although there is some overlap with our checklist, the criteria do not address how to present information about the effects of interventions other than ‘adopting risk communication principles’.

*Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation