A Yardstick for Danger: Developing a Flexible and Sensitive Measure of Risk Perception

While individual perceptions of risk are central to many behavioral theories of hazard response and are of considerable interest in both conceptual and applied work surrounding risk, hazards, and decision making, there is currently no consensus on how perceived risk should best be measured. Several recent efforts have laid the groundwork for a conceptual model outlining four key factors that make up risk perception: exposure, susceptibility, severity, and affective response. In this article, we use an extensive scale-development process to develop empirically supported 3-4 item subscales to measure each of those four dimensions. Using cognitive interviewing techniques and several quantitative psychometric methods including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and item-response theory analyses, we reduce a large set of potential items to the highest-quality items to assess each subscale. These subscales can be used to make comparisons across perceived risk in different hazard contexts and populations.