European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, Knowledge Spa, Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, Cornwall, UK.
Risk Anal. 2017 Nov;37(11):2132-2149. doi: 10.1111/risa.12789. Epub 2017 Mar 17.
Risk communication is fundamental in ensuring people are equipped with the knowledge needed to navigate varied risks. One generally well-regarded framework for the development of such communications is the mental models approach to risk communication (MMARC). Developed during the 1990s, the MMARC has been applied to a range of health, technological, and environmental risks. However, as yet, we know of no attempt to collate and review articles that evaluated communications developed using the MMARC. This article took a first step at addressing this gap by conducting a scoping review that aimed to begin to explore the fidelity with which the approach has been applied, explore whether there appeared to be sufficient studies to warrant a future systematic review, and identify future research questions. Although the initial search found over 100 articles explicitly applying the MMARC, only 12 of these developed a risk-related communication that was tested against a control (and thus included in the current review). All studies reported a positive effect of the MMARC versus control communication for at least some of the outcome measures (knowledge being the most prevalent). However, there was wide variation between studies including type of control, outcomes assessed, and only five studies reported adopting a randomized design. The review highlights both the need for greater fidelity in the way future studies operationalize the MMARC approach, and suggests that a full-scale systematic review of the MMARC literature appears justified, especially given the possibility of a large gray literature in this area.
风险沟通对于确保人们具备应对各种风险所需的知识至关重要。一个被广泛认可的风险沟通框架是心理模式方法（MMARC）。该方法于 20 世纪 90 年代开发，已应用于各种健康、技术和环境风险。然而，我们还没有尝试对使用 MMARC 开发的沟通进行评估的文章进行综合回顾和审查。本文通过进行范围审查，迈出了第一步来解决这一差距，旨在开始探索该方法的应用准确性，探索是否有足够的研究来支持未来的系统审查，并确定未来的研究问题。尽管最初的搜索发现了 100 多篇明确应用 MMARC 的文章，但只有 12 篇开发了针对对照的风险相关沟通（因此包含在本次审查中）。所有研究都报告了 MMARC 与对照沟通在至少一些结果指标上的积极效果（知识是最普遍的）。然而，研究之间存在广泛的差异，包括对照的类型、评估的结果，只有五项研究报告采用了随机设计。该审查强调了未来研究在实施 MMARC 方法时需要更高的准确性，并且表明对 MMARC 文献进行全面的系统审查是合理的，特别是考虑到该领域可能存在大量灰色文献。
