WARNING SIGNAL WORDS - CONNOTED STRENGTH AND UNDERSTANDABILITY BY CHILDREN, ELDERS, AND NONNATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS

Signal words, such as DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION, are commonly used i n sign and product label warnings for the purpose of conveying differe nt levels of hazard. Previous research has focused on whether people's perceptions of connoted hazard are consistent with the levels suggest ed by design standards and guidelines. Most investigations have used c ollege students to evaluate the terms; other populations who may be at greater risk have not been adequately studied. One purpose of the pre sent research was to determine whether young children, the elderly, an d non-native English speakers perceive similar connoted hazard levels from the terms as undergraduates and published guidelines. A second pu rpose was to assess the terms' comprehensibility using various metrics such as missing values (i.e. ratings left blank) and understandabilit y ratings. A third purpose was to develop a list of potential signal w ords that probably would be understandable to members of special popul ations. In the first experiment, 298 fourth- to eighth-grade students and 70 undergraduates rated 43 potential signal words on how careful t hey would be after seeing each term. The undergraduates also rated the terms on strength and understandability. In the second experiment, 98 elders and 135 non-native English speakers rated the same set of term s. The rank ordering of the words was found to be consistent across th e participant groups. In general, the younger students gave higher car efulness ratings than the undergraduates. The words that the younger c hildren and the non-native English speakers frequently left blank were given lower understandibility ratings. Finally, a short list of terms was derived that 95% or 99% of the youngest students (fourth- and fif th-graders) and 80% of the non-native English speakers understood. Imp lications of hazard communication are discussed.