The environmental impacts of bottled water prompted us to explore drinking water choices at Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, IN. A random sample of 2,045 Purdue University students, staff, and faculty was invited to participate in an online survey. The survey assessed current behaviors as well as perceived barriers and benefits to drinking tap water versus bottled water. 677 surveys were completed for a response rate of 33.1%. We then conducted qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of university undergraduates (n = 21) to obtain contextual insights into the survey results and the beliefs of individuals with a variety of drinking water preferences. This study revealed that women drink disproportionately more bottled water then men while undergraduate students drink more than graduate students, staff and faculty. The study also uncovered a widespread belief that recycling eliminates the environmental impacts of bottled water. Important barriers to drinking tap water at Purdue include: perceived risks from tap water and the perceived safety of bottled water, preferring the taste of bottled water, and the convenience of drinking bottled water. The qualitative interviews revealed that drinking water choices can be influenced by several factors-especially whether individuals trust tap water to be clean-but involve varying levels of complexity. The implications of these results for social marketing strategies to promote tap water are discussed.
It is widely recognized that mass media can affect public perception of risk. In recent years, the public has been exposed to stories on emerging health and environmental risks, including risks from aquaculture. Two key studies (“trigger events”) compared contaminants in farmed and wild salmon and evaluated potential health risks of consumption. This study investigates how US newspaper coverage of farmed salmon fluctuated in the face of this emerging scientific information and which types of purported risks and benefits received the most attention. We hypothesized that media attention to farmed salmon would focus more on negative information (e.g., health risks) than on positive information (e.g., health benefits) and that those health risks highlighted most often would be dramatic, rare, or vivid. US newspaper stories specific to farmed salmon and published from 2000 to 2005 were collected from online databases (N = 206). Stories were content analyzed for amount of text covering various human health and environmental risks and health benefits associated with farmed salmon. Over all time periods, 49% of text about farmed salmon discussed human health risks, while benefits were described less than 10% of the time. The two trigger events corresponded with a shift in media attention away from environmental risks to human health risks, as media generally reported the studies’ conclusions as true. Risks emphasized the most tended to be severe or dreadful, such as cancer and developmental defects, while other health risks and all environmental risks received much less attention. This pattern presented the public with a message of severe health consequences from consuming farmed salmon and could induce the public to perceive health risks as being much greater than could be offset by its health benefits.
This study examined how health risks and benefits are presented in newsprint stories about contamination in farmed salmon. Following recent research, the quality of information was captured as the level of numerical and contextual precision. The authors supplemented and critiqued this analysis with an examination of rhetorical markers of certainty and magnitude. In a census of 83 stories focusing on two research studies, most statements presented information in a qualitative format, deemed to be the least informative for readers, although most stories contained a limited amount of high-precision information, generally as guidelines for consumers. However, journalists’ rhetorical practices conveyed conflicting interpretations of the same data, leading to inconclusive messages about risks and benefits. Even highly precise numeric data were often presented in ways that were likely to confuse readers. Results illustrate a need to go beyond analyzing precision levels when studying how the media present scientific research with implications for consumer health, as rhetorical formulations change the meaning of risk statements.
This study collects data on community views of the Wabash River in northcentral Indiana using 36 representative statements. The statements were incorporated into two different formats: (1) a standard survey, or Likerttype, instrument and (2) a Q-methodology instrument for mailed distribution Downloaded from to two separate random samples of community residents, which allowed for comparing the results of these methodologies. The data were analyzed using factor analysis techniques. The analysis revealed that under identical sampling conditions, the results of Q and R methodologies are similar. Additional discussion focuses on the similarities and differences of these results and how Q methodology can contribute to our understanding of community attitudes toward natural resources.
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