Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Department of Drug Policy, PO Box 4404, Nydalen, 0403 Oslo, Norway; Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway.
Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway.
Int J Drug Policy. 2018 Apr;54:51-57. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.01.013. Epub 2018 Feb 2.
The provision of accurate information on health damaging behaviours and products is a widely accepted and widespread governmental task. It is easily mismanaged. This study demonstrates a simple method which can help to evaluate whether such information corrects recipient risk beliefs.
Participants assess risks numerically, before and after being exposed to a relevant risk communication. Accuracy is incentivised by awarding financial prizes to answers closest to a pursued risk belief. To illustrate this method, 228 students from the University of Oslo, Norway, were asked to estimate the mortality risk of Swedish snus and cigarettes twice, before and after being exposed to one of three risk communications with information on the health dangers of snus.
The data allow us to measure how participants updated their risk beliefs after being exposed to different risk communications. Risk information from the government strongly distorted risk perceptions for snus. A newspaper article discussing the relative risks of cigarettes and snus reduced belief errors regarding snus risks, but increased belief errors regarding smoking. The perceived quality of the risk communication was not associated with decreased belief errors.
Public health information can potentially make the public less informed on risks about harmful products or behaviours. This risk can be reduced by targeting identified, measurable belief errors and empirically assessing how alternative communications affect these. The proposed method of incentivised risk estimation might be helpful in future assessments of risk communications.
提供关于危害健康行为和产品的准确信息是一项被广泛接受和广泛实施的政府任务。但它很容易被管理不善。本研究展示了一种简单的方法，可以帮助评估此类信息是否纠正了接受者的风险认知。
参与者在接触相关风险沟通之前和之后进行数值风险评估。通过向最接近目标风险认知的答案提供金融奖励来激励准确性。为了说明这种方法，挪威奥斯陆大学的 228 名学生两次被要求估计瑞典鼻烟和香烟的死亡率风险，在接触关于鼻烟健康危害的三种风险沟通信息之一之前和之后。
这些数据使我们能够衡量参与者在接触不同的风险沟通后如何更新他们的风险认知。来自政府的风险信息强烈扭曲了对鼻烟风险的认知。一篇讨论香烟和鼻烟相对风险的报纸文章降低了对鼻烟风险的认知错误，但增加了对吸烟风险的认知错误。风险沟通的质量感知与减少认知错误无关。
公共卫生信息可能会使公众对有害产品或行为的风险了解减少。通过针对已识别的、可衡量的认知错误，并通过实证评估替代沟通如何影响这些错误，可以降低这种风险。激励风险估计的建议方法可能有助于未来对风险沟通的评估。
