FORMING HOMOGENEOUS CLUSTERS FOR DIFFERENTIAL RISK INFORMATION

Latent risk situations are always present in society. General informat ion an these risk situations is supposed to be received differently by different groups of people in the population. In the aftermath of spe cific accidents different groups presumably have need of specific info rmation about how to act to survive, to avoid injuries, to fmd more in formation, to obtain facts about the accidents etc. As targets for inf ormation these different groups could be defined in different ways. Th e conventional way is to divide the population according to demographi c variables, such as age, sex, occupation etc. Another way would be to structure the population according to dependent Variables measured in different studies. They may concern risk perception, emotional reacti ons, specific technical knowledge of the accidents, and belief in the information sources. One procedure for forming such groupings of peopl e into homogeneous clusters would be by statistical clustering methods on dependent variables. Examples of such clustering procedures are pr esented and discussed. Data are from a Norwegian study on the percepti on of radiation from nuclear accidents and other radiation sources. Sp eculations are made on different risk information strategies. Elements of a research programme are proposed.