Data is Personal: Attitudes and Perceptions of Data Visualization in Rural Pennsylvania
This work addresses a gap in data visualization guidelines by focusing on underrepresented rural populations, though it is incremental as it identifies factors without proposing new methods.
The study investigated factors influencing attention and trust in data visualizations among rural Pennsylvania residents, finding that educational background, political affiliation, and personal experience intermix to shape attitudes, based on 42 semi-structured interviews.
Many of the guidelines that inform how designers create data visualizations originate in studies that unintentionally exclude populations that are most likely to be among the 'data poor'. In this paper, we explore which factors may drive attention and trust in rural populations with diverse economic and educational backgrounds - a segment that is largely underrepresented in the data visualization literature. In 42 semi-structured interviews in rural Pennsylvania (USA), we find that a complex set of factors intermix to inform attitudes and perceptions about data visualization - including educational background, political affiliation, and personal experience. The data and materials for this research can be found at https://osf.io/uxwts/