TY - JOUR
T1 - Participant-focused analysis
T2 - Explanatory power of the classic psychometric paradigm in risk perception
AU - Bronfman, Nicolás C.
AU - Cifuentes, Luis Abdón
AU - Gutiérrez, Virna Vaneza
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the financial support from Chile’s Conicyt through the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Research (Fondecyt) having partially funded this work through Grant 1020501. N. Bronfman appreciates Conicyt’s support through its Doctoral Thesis Scholarship. We would like to extend special thanks to Alex Crawford for his valuable insight, discussion, and criticism.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Typical psychometric paradigm factors appear to have greater explanatory power for individual participants than previously envisaged. It is possible to acquire interpretable information about single participants using two factors (catastrophic potential and social and personal exposure) from aggregated participant-focused data. Our results suggest that the classical psychometric model originated by Fischhoff and Slovic in the early 1980s to explain differences among hazards may also be capable of accounting for differences among participants. While socio-demographic conditions on their own do not have substantial explanatory power, they are statistically significant and appear to dictate the position of participants within the factor space obtained using a participant-focused analysis. One of the principal criticisms of the psychometric paradigm has been its lack of interpretability when using disaggregated data, but incorporating socio-demographic variables overcomes this limitation.
AB - Typical psychometric paradigm factors appear to have greater explanatory power for individual participants than previously envisaged. It is possible to acquire interpretable information about single participants using two factors (catastrophic potential and social and personal exposure) from aggregated participant-focused data. Our results suggest that the classical psychometric model originated by Fischhoff and Slovic in the early 1980s to explain differences among hazards may also be capable of accounting for differences among participants. While socio-demographic conditions on their own do not have substantial explanatory power, they are statistically significant and appear to dictate the position of participants within the factor space obtained using a participant-focused analysis. One of the principal criticisms of the psychometric paradigm has been its lack of interpretability when using disaggregated data, but incorporating socio-demographic variables overcomes this limitation.
KW - Principal component analysis
KW - Psychometric paradigm
KW - Risk perceptions
KW - Socio-demographic conditions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=50949099430&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13669870801967143
DO - 10.1080/13669870801967143
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:50949099430
SN - 1366-9877
VL - 11
SP - 735
EP - 753
JO - Journal of Risk Research
JF - Journal of Risk Research
IS - 6
ER -