Centre for Decision Research, Leeds University Business School, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Aug 20;110 Suppl 3(Suppl 3):14062-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212729110. Epub 2013 Aug 13.
As members of a democratic society, individuals face complex decisions about whether to support climate change mitigation, vaccinations, genetically modified food, nanotechnology, geoengineering, and so on. To inform people's decisions and public debate, scientific experts at government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and other organizations aim to provide understandable and scientifically accurate communication materials. Such communications aim to improve people's understanding of the decision-relevant issues, and if needed, promote behavior change. Unfortunately, existing communications sometimes fail when scientific experts lack information about what people need to know to make more informed decisions or what wording people use to describe relevant concepts. We provide an introduction for scientific experts about how to use mental models research with intended audience members to inform their communication efforts. Specifically, we describe how to conduct interviews to characterize people's decision-relevant beliefs or mental models of the topic under consideration, identify gaps and misconceptions in their knowledge, and reveal their preferred wording. We also describe methods for designing follow-up surveys with larger samples to examine the prevalence of beliefs as well as the relationships of beliefs with behaviors. Finally, we discuss how findings from these interviews and surveys can be used to design communications that effectively address gaps and misconceptions in people's mental models in wording that they understand. We present applications to different scientific domains, showing that this approach leads to communications that improve recipients' understanding and ability to make informed decisions.
作为民主社会的一员，个人在是否支持气候变化缓解、疫苗接种、转基因食品、纳米技术、地球工程等方面面临着复杂的决策。为了为人们的决策和公共辩论提供信息，政府机构、非政府组织和其他组织的科学专家旨在提供易懂且科学准确的沟通材料。这些沟通旨在提高人们对决策相关问题的理解，如果需要，还可以促进行为改变。不幸的是，当科学专家缺乏人们做出更明智决策所需了解的信息，或者缺乏人们用来描述相关概念的措辞时，现有的沟通有时会失败。我们为科学专家提供了一个介绍，说明如何使用心智模型研究与目标受众进行沟通，以告知他们的沟通工作。具体来说，我们描述了如何进行访谈，以描述人们对所考虑主题的决策相关信念或心智模型，识别他们知识中的差距和误解，并揭示他们偏爱的措辞。我们还描述了使用更大样本进行后续调查的方法，以检查信念的普遍性以及信念与行为的关系。最后，我们讨论了如何利用这些访谈和调查的结果来设计沟通，有效地解决人们心智模型中的差距和误解，并使用他们理解的措辞。我们介绍了不同科学领域的应用，表明这种方法可以改善收件人的理解能力，并帮助他们做出明智的决策。
