Cohn Simon
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
Health (London). 2016 May;20(3):203-19. doi: 10.1177/1363459315574117. Epub 2015 Mar 13.
The issue of public acceptability of health policies is key if they are to have significant and lasting impact. This study, based on focus groups conducted in England, examines the ways people responded to, and made sense of, policy ideas aimed at reducing alcohol consumption. Although effective policies were supported in the abstract, specific proposals were consistently rejected because they were not thought to map onto the fundamental causes of excessive drinking, which was not attributed to alcohol itself but instead its cultural context. Rather than being influenced by the credibility of evidence, or assessed according to likely gains set against possible losses, such responses were established dynamically as people interacted with others to make sense of the topic. This has significant implications for policy-makers, suggesting that existing beliefs and knowledge need to be taken into account as potentially productive rather than obstructive resources.
如果卫生政策要产生重大而持久的影响，公众对其可接受性问题至关重要。本研究基于在英格兰进行的焦点小组讨论，考察了人们对旨在减少酒精消费的政策理念的反应方式及理解方式。虽然总体上支持有效的政策，但具体提议却一直遭到拒绝，因为人们认为这些提议没有触及过度饮酒的根本原因，过度饮酒的原因并非酒精本身，而是其文化背景。这种反应并非受证据可信度的影响，也不是根据可能的收益与可能的损失来评估，而是在人们相互交流以理解该话题的过程中动态形成的。这对政策制定者具有重大意义，表明现有的观念和知识应被视为可能具有建设性而非阻碍性的资源加以考虑。
