Tweet3 T's for risk communication messages: Test alternative ways of explaining; Tune the quantitative precision; Tweak the emotional content.
AbstractRisk communication takes many forms, can serve a number of different purposes, and can inform people about a wide variety of risks. We outline three challenges that must often be met when communicating about risk, irrespective of the form or purpose of that communication, or the type of risk that this involves. The first challenge is how best to help people understand the phenomenology of the risks that they are exposed to: The nature of the risk, the mechanism(s) by which they arise, and, therefore, what can be done to manage these risks. Each risk has its own phenomenology; therefore, rather than offering generic guidance, we illustrate with the case of climate change risk how evidence from behavioral science can guide the design of messages about risk. The second challenge is how best to present quantitative risk information about risk probabilities. Here, there is potential for: Ambiguity, difficulty in evaluating quantitative information, and weak numeracy skills among those being targeted by a message. We outline when each of these difficulties is most likely to arise as a function of the precision of the message and show how messages that cover multiple levels of precision might ameliorate these difficulties. The third challenge is the role played by people's emotional reactions to the risks that they face and to the messages that they receive about these risks. Here, we discuss the pros and cons of playing up, or playing down, the emotional content of risk communication messages.
While the public can play a vital role in saving lives during emergencies, intervention is only effective if people have the skills, confidence, and willingness to help. This review employs a five-stage framework to systematically analyse first aid and emergency helping literature from 22 countries (predominately in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States). The review covers 54 articles that investigate public first-aid knowledge and uptake of first-aid training (40); public confidence in first-aid skills and willingness to help during an emergency (21); and barriers to or enablers of learning first aid and delivering first aid in an emergency (25). The findings identify high levels of perceived knowledge, confidence, and willingness to help, supporting the contention that the public can play a vital role during an emergency. However, the findings also point to low uptake levels, low tested skill-specific knowledge, and barriers to learning first aid and helping, indicating that the first-aid training landscape is in need of improvement.
A hazard ratio presents one benefit of exercise as reducing annual mortality risk by 19%. Alternatively, speed-of-ageing metaphors present this as adding 2.5 years to one's life expectancyequating to 1 extra hour each day-or taking 2.5 years off one's "effective age." Few studies compare these (increasingly popular) metaphors. Study 1 compared perception and comprehension between speed-of-ageing metaphors and hazard ratios. Study 2 compared the hazard ratio with 3 versions of effective age (change-in-age, personal, and age-matched age). Results revealed a disadvantage to the change-in-age format (behaviour X makes someone Y years older), with unhealthy behaviours perceived as less risky and healthy behaviours as less beneficial, information judged less likely to affect behaviour and harder to understand. The personal format (behaviour makes your effective age X) shows no such disadvantage and is objectively better understood than are hazard ratios. These results support the use of personalised effective ages in health and risk communication.
These results highlight the impact of seemingly arbitrary design choices on inspection order. For instance, presenting risks where they will be seen first leads to relatively less time spent considering treatment benefits. Other research suggests these changes to inspection order can influence multi-option and multi-attribute choices, and represent an area for future research.
The above article from Disasters, published online on 24 June 2019 in Wiley Online Library (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com) has been withdrawn by agreement among the authors, the Journal editors and John Wiley & Sons Inc. on behalf of ODI. The withdrawal has been agreed because this is a duplicate of an article that has been published in Disasters Volume 44 Issue 1.
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