A Strategy Study on Risk Communication of Pandemic Influenza: A Mental Model Study of College Students in Beijing

Abstract

Purpose

To understand the characteristics of risk perception of influenza pandemic in college students with prominent frequency and the differences between these risk perceptions and professionals. Then, offering a proposal for the government to improve the efficiency of risk communication and health education.

Methods

According to the mental model theory, researchers first draw a framework of key risk factors, and then they ask these students about the understanding of the framework with questionnaire and then making concept statistics and content analysis on the respondents’ answers.

Results

Researchers find some students’ misunderstanding of pandemic including excessive optimism to the consequences of a pandemic, a lack of detailed understanding of mitigation measures, and negative attitudes towards health education and vaccination. Most students showed incomplete and incorrect views about concepts related to the development and exposure factors, impact and mitigation measures. Once threatened, it may lead to the failure of decision-making. The majority of students we interviewed had positive attitudes towards personal emergency preparedness for a pandemic influenza and specialized health education in the future.

Conclusion

Researchers suggest that the government should make a specific pandemic guidance plan by referring to the risk cognitive characteristics of college students shown in the research results, and update the methods of health education to college students.

Keywords:

• risk communication
• pandemic influenza
• mental model
• health emergency
• health education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Linxian Wang for helping compiling interview questionnaires, making suggestions on interview skills and finding supporting documents. We also express the sincere gratitude to students involved in the interviews of this research. This research did not involve any experiments or investigation which need ethical approval, and did not receive any specific funding too.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest for this work.