Community people's preference of hand drawn face graph as a health informing device

Although the cartoon of a face is an effective device to visualize the image of numerical indices, its use is not popular among community health personnel. In the present study, we used the face graph as an aid for health informing and educating activities in the setting of a community health activity. For this purpose, we designed a special sheet to draw face by hand. By using this sheet, each person can draw his/her 'face' from one's laboratory data index under the guidance of additional lines. The acceptability of this hand drawn face was evaluated by 283 people aged 65 years and over at a health counseling session. For both men and women, a higher percentage preferred face (37% for men, 40% for women) over numeral (23% for men, 17% for women). The preference for the face graph was also observed at each of three age groups within each sex. The highest affinity to face (64%) was observed for the 14 women who reported as cataract patients.