JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Data dashboards are published tools that present visualizations that are increasingly used to display data about behavioral health, social determinants of health, chronic and infectious disease risk, and environmental risks to inform or support public health endeavors. Dashboards can be an evidence-based approach used by communities to influence decision-making in health care for specific populations. Despite widespread use, evidence on how to best design and use dashboards in the public health realm is limited. There is also a notable dearth of studies that examine and document the complexity and heterogeneity of dashboards in community settings.

Objective:

Community stakeholders engaged in the community response to the opioid overdose crisis could benefit from the use of data dashboards for decision-making. As part of the Communities That HEAL (CTH) intervention, community data dashboards were created for stakeholders to support decision-making. We assessed stakeholders’ perceptions on the usability and use of the CTH dashboards for decision-making.

Methods:

We conducted a mixed-methods assessment between June and July 2021 on the use of CTH dashboards. We administered the System Usability Scale (SUS) and conducted semi-structured group interviews with users in 33 communities across four states of the US. The SUS comprises 10 five-point Likert scale questions measuring usability, each scored from zero to four. The interview guides were informed by the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) and focused on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use, and contextual factors.

Results:

Sixty-two users of the CTH dashboards completed the SUS and interviews. SUS scores (Grand Mean=73; SD=4.6) indicated that CTH dashboards were within the acceptable range for usability. From the qualitative interview data, we inductively created sub-themes within the four dimensions of the TAM to contextualize stakeholders’ perceptions on dashboard usefulness, ease of use, intention to use, and contextual factors. These data also highlighted gaps in knowledge, design, and use that could focus efforts to improve use and comprehension of dashboards by stakeholders.

Conclusions:

We present a set of prioritized gaps identified by our national group and list a set of lessons learned for improved data dashboard design and use for community stakeholders. Findings from our novel application of both the SUS and TAM provide insights and highlight important gaps and lessons learned that inform design for data dashboards for use by decision-making community stakeholders. Clinical Trial: This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration through the NIH HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-termSM) Initiative under award numbers UM1DA049394, UM1DA049406, UM1DA049412, UM1DA049415, UM1DA049417 (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04111939).