Risk Comparisons in a Democratic Society: What People Say They Do and Do Not Want

Using an exploratory focus group, Dr. Johnson examines citizen responses to common risk message techniques

Public Reaction to Mandated Language for U.S. Drinking Water Quality Reports

The author discusses results of a survey evaluating the mandated language for United States drinking water quality reports

Comparing Bottled Water and Tap Water: Experiments in Risk Communication

The author discusses results of experiments in risk communication comparing bottled water and tap water

Advancing Understanding of Knowledge\u27s Role in Lay Risk Perception

Emphasizing how knowledge affects lay Risk perception, summarizing studies and suggesting further research, the author differentiates between knowledge production, knowledge dissemination and information processing as affected by, e.g., heuristics and Risk aversion. He also suggests that better understanding of lay knowledge can also illuminate experts\u27 hazard knowledge

Utility Customers\u27 Views of the Consumer Confidence Report of Drinking Water Quality

The author evaluates consumer understanding of water quality reports provided to them by their drinking water utility under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996

Public Participation in Hazard Management: The Use of Citizen Panels in the U.S.

After discussing the need for citizen participation in Risk management and a method of facilitating such participation as developed in Germany, the authors discuss and analyze its subsequent modification and use in a sewage sludge management project in New Jersey

Testing the Role of Technical Information in Public Risk Perception

It is widely believed that more detail about health effects and likely exposure routes is apt to reduce citizens\u27 concerns about low-probability Risks. The authors\u27 study suggests that providing such detail may not be as useful as, e.g., addressing public concerns and keeping citizens current on officials\u27 actions

Public Perceptions of Regulatory Costs, Their Uncertainty and Interindividual Distribution

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/122430/1/risa12532.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/122430/2/risa12532_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/122430/3/risa12532-sup-0001-SupMat.pd

Public perceptions of expert disagreement: Bias and incompetence or a complex and random world?

30 page PDFExpert disputes can present laypeople with several challenges including trying to understand why such disputes occur. In an online survey of the U.S. public, we used a psychometric approach to elicit perceptions of expert disputes for 56 forecasts sampled from seven domains (climate change, crime, economics, environment, health, politics, terrorism). People with low education, or with low self-reported knowledge of the topic, were most likely to attribute expert disputes to expert incompetence. People with higher self-reported knowledge tended to attribute disputes to expert bias due to financial or ideological reasons. The more highly educated and cognitively able were most likely to attribute disputes to natural factors, such as the irreducible complexity and randomness of the phenomenon. We highlight several important implications of these results for scientists and risk managers and argue for further research on how people perceive and grapple with expert disputes.We would like to acknowledge the generous support of the National Science Foundation: This material is based upon work supported by NSF under Grant Nos. #1231231 (Robin Gregory, PI; Nathan Dieckmann co-PI) and #0925008 (Nathan Dieckmann, PI) to Decision Research. All views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone

Let\u27s Talk About How We Talk: Communication Agreements in the Library Workplace

Purpose: This chapter introduces a new tool, termed the Communication Agreement, for enhancing communication in the library workplace. The chapter defines the communication agreement, provides discussion questions for forming a communication agreement, provides examples of how communication agreements are beneficial to a diverse library workforce, and provides strategies to informally assess communication agreements’ effectiveness. Practical implications: Communication problems in diverse library workplaces can lead to, or exacerbate, conflict between employees. Generational, cross-cultural, gender, and other differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflict between employees. The communication agreement provides library managers with a tool to bridge differences in communication styles between employees, enable employees to engage in more effective communication, assist employees in developing better understandings and respect for colleagues of different backgrounds, and raise employees’ emotional intelligences. Originality/Value: Numerous resources and publications provide generalized approaches to communicating with others in a heterogeneous workplace or team, but the communication agreement provides a new approach for developing effective communication between people in a diverse library workplace. Limitations: The chapter lays out informal assessment strategies for the communication agreement, but formal assessment methods and metrics still need to be developed