THE MEANING OF 6.8 - NUMERACY AND NORMALITY IN HEALTH INFORMATION TALKS

The ambiguities of risk which stem from its translation from epidemiol ogical findings into clinical knowledge and practice and thus to lay e xperiences of health and illness is a clear dilemma. How are risks exp ressed statistically, or otherwise mathematically, to be interpreted a nd communicated within the discourse of medico-science, and how within the discourse of an individual's everyday life? An important tool in all risk discourses and in preventive practices such as health informa tion is testing and test results. Test results-presented in mathematic al terms as points on a scale, or as a number-are in fact fundamental to preventive practice. But what do we know about how people involved in these tests understand them and how the results are used in the con struction of ideas about risk and normalcy? This article attempts to a nswer part of that question by drawing on an empirical study of the us e of numbers as metaphors in talks between a nurse and her potential p atients in a directed health survey. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd