Communicating risks and benefits

[Guest guest]

Greetings,

Thought this piece to be interesting and useful for advocates and advocacy

organizations and also to the informed consent process.

Cheers,

Karl

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/ReportsManualsForms/Reports/ucm268078.htm

Chapter 1: Introduction

Baruch Fischhoff, PhD - Carnegie Mellon University

Noel T. Brewer, PhD - University of North Carolina

S. Downs, PhD - Carnegie Mellon University

Organizations bear economic, legal, and ethical obligations to provide

useful information about the risks and benefits of their products, policies,

and services. Failure to fulfill those obligations can be costly, as seen

with Three Mile Island, Hurricane Katrina, Vioxx, and other cases when

people believe that they have been denied vital information. Less dramatic

versions of these problems arise with poorly handled produce recalls, badly

labeled appliances, and confusing medication instructions. Financial

analysts estimate that 70% of a typical private firm's assets are

intangibles, like goodwill, that can be lost when communications fail.

Public institutions' reputations often depend on their ability to

communicate.

Risk communication is the term of art used for situations when people need

good information to make sound choices. It is distinguished from public

affairs (or public relations) communication by its commitment to accuracy

and its avoidance of spin. Having been spun adds insult to injury for people

who have been hurt because they were inadequately informed. Risk

communications must deal with the benefits that risk decisions can produce

(e.g., profits from investments, better health from medical procedures), as

well as the risks - making the term something of a misnomer, although less

clumsy than a more inclusive one.

The risk communication research literature is large and diverse, including

results from many contributing disciplines (e.g., psychology, decision

science, sociology, communications) and a wide range of applications.

Unfortunately, the norms of academic research make it inaccessible to

outsiders, filling it with jargon and technical details. Moreover, academic

researchers' theoretical interests often lead to studying communication

processes in isolation, leaving gaps as to how research results apply to

complex, real-world situations. Unable to access the research literature,

practitioners rely on their intuition, unproven best practices, and popular

accounts of psychological research.

This guide seeks to fill that gap, making evidence-based communication

possible. The chapters that follow cover key topics in risk communication, 2

| Chapter 1: Introduction

focusing on three questions:

(1) What does the science say about that aspect of human behavior?

(2) What are the practical implications of those scientific results?

(3) How can one evaluate communications based on that science?

These questions assume that sound communications must be evidence-based in

two related ways. One is that communications should be consistent with the

science - and not do things known not to work nor ignore known problems.

The second is communications should be evaluated - because even the best

science cannot guarantee results. Rather, the best science produces the

best-informed best guesses about how well communications will work. However,

even these best guesses can miss the mark, meaning that they must be

evaluated to determine how good they are and how they can be improved.