Consider a scenario where a visualization practitioner wants to evaluate their communicative visualization (e.g., an interactive visualization incorporated with an online magazine article) according to levels of AE within a target group of users. The practitioner can recruit a group of respondents (more is generally better, but size can be adjusted depending on resources and other factors) from their target population (e.g., readers of that online magazine). By asking respondents to answer the items after interacting with the visualization, the practitioner can calculate the level of AE of those particular participants. By averaging scores, user's AE levels can be estimated for that visualization.

Figure (a) provides a visual depiction of an evaluation scenario where a survey instrument is being used to assess AE. (b) shows how a designer can utilize a survey for a pilot tryout and for user testing. Note that for both cases, the evaluation can be conducted on-site (e.g., lab study) or remotely (e.g., online crowd-sourcing). A short self-report survey instrument (with roughly 10 items) will not take too much time, which makes a larger scale user testing more feasible (e.g., online crowd sourcing).