How do doctors use the quantitative and quantitative probability language to communicate the chances of pregnancy in fertility treatment contexts.

I am broadly interested in applied statistics with particular emphasis on cognitive psychology. In particular, my current project explores how doctors and patients use the qualitative and quantitative probability language to communicate the chances of pregnancy in fertility treatment contexts. Doctors commonly use probabilistic language when communicating the evidence-based chances that a treatment will be successful. When asked about terms used by doctors --- such as that pregnancy is “likely” or has “little chance” --- doctors and patients showed heterogeneity in both their behavior and their ordinal rankings of terms and their quantitative ratings. Specifically, the wide variety between and within individuals in terms of their judgement of probability estimates across contexts; the fatigue from participants causing the individuals fluctuation among a long list of identical probability terms (e.g., likely, probably, probable, better than even, unlikely etc.). Furthermore, a pairwise correlation test between participants’ ranking responses explicitly showed three clusters within the dataset. The clusters illustrated three types of participants in the dataset, who ranked the terms in the requested order; a small proportion of participants ranked the terms in a reversed order; and some compiled the task partially. I am interested in formally modeling the probability judgements to understand both differences across people within a group (individual differences) and differences between groups (doctors). In the results of the data analysis, I am looking forward to providing insightful and referable guidance for doctors so that they have a certain level of knowledge regarding if using probability language actually facilitates the clearness of a conversation. If that is helpful, what specific forms or certain words are recommended in the fertility conversations. By studying the unique characteristics fertility patients might have in terms of understanding probability language, they are expected to benefit from both emotionally and physically because more understandable information can be derived from the effective communication facilitating their decision-making process. Therefore, all sources of heterogeneity should be taken seriously in the data analysis in expecting a meaningful result.