EXPLORING THE PSYCHOMETRIC PARADIGM - COMPARISONS BETWEEN AGGREGATE AND INDIVIDUAL ANALYSES

The ''psychometric paradigm'' developed by Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lich tenstein was a landmark in research about public attitudes toward risk s. One problem with this work, however, was that (at least initially) it did not attempt to distinguish between individuals or groups of peo ple, except ''experts'' vs. ''lay people.'' This paradigm produced a ' 'cognitive map'' of hazards, and the assumption seemed to be that the characteristics identified were inherent attributes of risk. This pape r examines the validity of this assumption. A questionnaire survey sim ilar to those designed by Slovic et al. was conducted, but the data we re analyzed at both the aggregate level, using mean scores, and at the level of individuals (N = 131 Norwich residents). The results reporte d here demonstrate that (1) individuals vary in their perception of th e same risk issue; (2) individuals vary in their rating of the same ri sk characteristics on the same risk issue; and (3) some of the strong intercorrelations observed between risk characteristics at the aggrega te level are not supported when the same data are analysed at the leve l of individuals. Despite these findings, the relationship between ris k characteristics and risk perceptions inferred by the psychometric pa radigm did hold true at the level of individuals, for most-but not all -of the characteristics. In particular, the relationship between ''lac k of knowledge to those exposed'' and risk perceptions appears to be a complex one, a finding which has important implications for risk comm unication strategies.