Household chemicals and pre-schoolers: Caretakers’ beliefs and perspectives on risks and responsibilities

Chemical products are present in most households and can endanger the health of humans, particularly toddlers and pre-school children. With a focus on accident prevention, this article investigates parents and other caretakers’ beliefs and perspectives on risks and responsibilities. A mixed method approach was applied, combining in-depth qualitative interviews (pre-study, N = 10) and a quantitative survey (main study, N = 688) with Swiss caretakers of pre-school children. The questionnaire of the main study was developed based on the findings from the pre-study, and measured beliefs, perceptions of product, environmental risks, and responsibilities. The main findings suggest some prevalent misconceptions among parents regarding the risks of products perceived to be natural and the safety of child-protective caps. Furthermore, relationships were uncovered between psychological factors, such as perceived responsibility, trust and risk perception, and caretakers’ beliefs about household chemicals and their role in accident prevention. These beliefs highlight the need for preventive efforts focused on caretakers exhibiting pragmatic/trusting beliefs, compared to caretakers exhibiting protective or educational beliefs

Seeing household chemicals through the eyes of children—Investigating influential factors of preschoolers’ perception and behavior

Introduction: Children who encounter household chemicals run the risk of unintentional injury. The aim of this study was to understand which factors heighten children’s attention or misguide their decision-making concerning household chemicals. We hypothesized that certain product attributes (i.e., label, packaging, closure types), storage context, and parental beliefs play a role in this setting. Method: We conducted a laboratory study with N = 114 children (M = 45 months, SD = 6.5) and their parents (M = 38 years, SD = 4.92). Children completed a series of behavioral tasks in which they had to choose between products with different attributes, identify products in different storage contexts, and sort household chemicals. Results: The results confirmed that the children preferred products with cartoon-style labels compared to products without such labels. However, children’s decision-making did not differ for products with different closure types (child-resistant vs sprayer-type closures). Regarding the storage context, our results showed that the children particularly struggled to identify dishwashing tabs when they were stored with other food items rather than household chemicals. In terms of parental beliefs, our study found that parents rated more household chemicals as child-safe than their children did. Practical Application: Parents should buy household chemicals with neutral labels and pay attention to how their household chemicals are stored. Manufacturers should consider potential adverse effects when developing new product designs

Childhood poisonings: Effects of ambiguous product characteristics on preschool children's categorization of household chemicals

This study investigated preschool children's categorization and risk perception of products with ambiguous product characteristics (e.g., food‐like packaging). These characteristics make it difficult for preschool children to categorize household chemicals correctly. This, therefore, increases the risk of unintentional poisoning. We hypothesized that ambiguity arises from different product characteristics, such as the type of packaging, the products’ scent, or the packaging's color and transparency. In four behavioral tasks, N = 108 preschool children (M = 43 months, SD = 3) categorized different products and household chemicals with various types of packaging, colors, and scents. Individually wrapped dishwasher tablets were more likely to be categorized as edible than unwrapped ones. Furthermore, children who had interacted with any type of dishwasher tablet in the last 6 months performed better in identifying dishwasher tablets, regardless of packaging type. Household chemicals with a fruity scent were more likely to be categorized as drinkable than those with a chlorine scent. Finally, the children considered black bottles more dangerous and preferred them less than bottles of a different color. In contrast, bottle transparency generally did not seem to affect risk perception and preference. These findings confirm that ambiguous product characteristics influence children's categorization of unknown products and, thus, their risk perception and decision‐making. Manufacturers and caregivers are advised to reduce the ambiguity of household chemicals by designing more neutral product packaging and choosing products with more neutral elements, respectively

When information security depends on font size : how the saliency of warnings affects protection behavior

Prior research on how to improve the effectiveness of information security warnings has predominantly focused on either the informational content of warnings or their visual saliency. In an online experiment (N?=?1’486), we disentangle the effect of both manipulations and demonstrate that both factors simultaneously influence decision making. Our data indicate that the proportion of people who engage in protection behavior can be increased by roughly 65% by making a particular warning message more visually salient (i.e. a more conspicuous visual design is used). We also show that varying the message’s saliency can make people behave very differently when confronted with the same threat or behave very similarly when confronted with threats that differ widely in terms of severity of outcomes. Our results suggest that the visual design of a warning may warrant at least as much attention as the informational content that the warning message conveys

The DECIDE project: from surveillance data to decision-support for farmers and veterinarians

Farmers, veterinarians and other animal health managers in the livestock sector are currently missing sufficient information on prevalence and burden of contagious endemic animal diseases. They need adequate tools for risk assessment and prioritization of control measures for these diseases. The DECIDE project develops data-driven decision-support tools, which present (i) robust and early signals of disease emergence and options for diagnostic confirmation; and (ii) options for controlling the disease along with their implications in terms of disease spread, economic burden and animal welfare. DECIDE focuses on respiratory and gastro-intestinal syndromes in the three most important terrestrial livestock species (pigs, poultry, cattle) and on reduced growth and mortality in two of the most important aquaculture species (salmon and trout). For each of these, we (i) identify the stakeholder needs; (ii) determine the burden of disease and costs of control measures; (iii) develop data sharing frameworks based on federated data access and meta-information sharing; (iv) build multivariate and multi-level models for creating early warning systems; and (v) rank interventions based on multiple criteria. Together, all of this forms decision-support tools to be integrated in existing farm management systems wherever possible and to be evaluated in several pilot implementations in farms across Europe. The results of DECIDE lead to improved use of surveillance data and evidence-based decisions on disease control. Improved disease control is essential for a sustainable food chain in Europe with increased animal health and welfare and that protects human health

The Social Amplification of Risk Framework: A Normative Perspective on Trust?

Public trust is being lamented as the central victim of our new, digital information environment, a notion that is depicted in labeling our society as “posttruth” or “posttrust.” Within this article, we aim to call this deficit view of public trust into question and kindle a more positive outlook in future research. For this, we utilize the Social Amplification of Risk Framework to discuss trust as an inherent aspect of social interactions and to question the frameworks’ normative approach to public trust and risk perception. Utilizing a literature review of prior studies that investigated trust within the structure of SARF and a case study on the impacts of Fukushima on public trust in nuclear energy, we would like to argue that the current normative “trust deficit model” should be overcome and future risk research should increasingly focus on the opportunities of the digital informational environment for risk communication.ISSN:0272-4332ISSN:1539-692

Heikler Umgang mit Kundendaten

Die neue Datenflut ermöglicht es auch KMU, vielfältige Informationen über Kunden zu sammeln und auszuwerten. Um mit Big Data aber tatsächlich erfolgreich zu sein und Imageschäden zu verhindern, ist viel Fingerspitzengefühl gefragt