Factoring in the human factor: experimental evidence on how public managers make sense of performance information

Abstract

We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 902 public hospital department heads to investigate whether and how their perceived understanding and objective recall of performance information may depend on the way it is presented, specifically, the features of its graphical representation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three alternative graphical displays of the same data, namely a target, a radar, or a pathway chart. We then measured both subjects’ perceived understanding—i.e., how clear and understandable they found the performance metrics—and their actual information recall—as assessed by an objective test. Our analyses demonstrate that alternative visual representations of equivalent data may cause significant differences in public managers’ ability to make sense of performance information. In the context of our experimental test, the pathway chart outperformed the other two in both perceived understanding and objective information recall, which suggests that public managers may have a good sense of which graphic information formats work best for them. We discuss how our findings can contribute to the advancement of behavioral public performance research.