SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Risk perception is typically measured in a variety of ways. The most popular perhaps being some combination of probability and consequence, or likelihood and severity. However, the measures reported in the literature also include items related to worry, concern, exposure, and vulnerability just to name a few. We conducted a review of the literature to identify the range of measures used previously, and then developed a survey instrument to test the variety of risk perception measures with a representative online panel of U.S. citizens. We used item response theory to identify the most valid and reliable measure of the construct from the set of possible items. We tested these multi-item measures of risk perception for three different hazards ranging from rather benign contexts (e.g., radon) to those more ideological in nature (e.g., climate change). We also measured individual traits of the respondents to assesss how responses to particular items may vary by respondent characteristics. Results of the measurement study will be presented and recommendations for how to best measure risk perception will be discussed.