The measurement of risk perceptions: the case of smoking

Tarek Baghal

Journal of Risk Research, 2011, vol. 14, issue 3, 351-364

Abstract: Smoking is among the most debated areas of risk perception, with varying conclusions about people's understanding of the risks. Part of the debate has focused on the measures being employed to support such claims. However, studies have not been conducted to compare the best methods to measure the perceived risk. This research first discusses the use of such measures, including survey data from tobacco industry archives that have not previously appeared in publication. Then, using nationally representative survey data of youth and adults in the USA, verbal probability scales and numeric scales are compared. The relationships between these measures are first examined for logical consistency with one another. Additionally, the strength of the relationships with and modeling power of the behavior of interest, smoking, are analyzed The results of difference of means tests, correlations and logistic regressions show that the numeric measures are inconsistent with logical semantic understanding, and more importantly, that vague quantifier scales show greater relationships and predictive power than numeric scales. Implications for survey design and further research are discussed.

Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2010.541559 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:14:y:2011:i:3:p:351-364

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2010.541559

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().