Risk communication for catastrophic events: results from focus groups

Abstract

Focus group methods are adapted here to address two important needs for risk communication: (1) to provide approaches to risk communication in very extreme and catastrophic events, and (2) to obtain risk communication content within the specific catastrophe area of chemical and biological attacks. Focus groups were designed and conducted according to well‐established protocols using hypothetical sarin and smallpox attacks resulting in a chemical or biological release in a confined public space in a transit system. These cases were used to identify content for risk communication information and suggest directions for further research in this area. Common procedures for conducting focus groups were used based on an initial review of such procedures. Four focus groups – two for each type of release – each lasted about two hours. Participants were professionals normally involved in emergencies in health, emergency management, and transportation. They were selected using a snowball sampling technique. Examples of findings for approaches to communicating such risks included how information should be organized over time and how space, locations, and places should be defined for releases to anchor perceptions geographically. Examples of findings for risk communication content are based on how professionals reacted to risk communications used during the two hypothetical releases they were presented with and how they suggested using risk communications. These findings have considerable implications for using and structuring focus groups to derive risk communication procedures and types of content to be used in the context of catastrophes.

Keywords:

• risk communication
• disasters
• terrorist attacks
• focus groups

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the US Department of Homeland Security through the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response at New York University under grant number 2004‐GT‐TX‐0001. However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the US Department of Homeland Security.

The Large Scale Emergency Readiness (LaSER) Project is being conducted at New York University (NYU) (http://www.nyu.edu/ccpr/projects/laser.html) and is a multi‐disciplinary and multi‐component effort, funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and NYU’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR). LaSER aims to improve the nation’s all hazards preparedness for the public health (including organizational) and medical consequences of a mass casualty emergency. LaSER is a five sub‐project effort and one of NYU’s largest multi‐disciplinary efforts that collaboratively encompasses seven of NYU’s public health‐associated departments (medicine, dentistry, nursing, law, public service, social work, bio‐informatics, and mathematics) encompassing disaster‐related expertise focusing on strategic, tactical, and operational research. CCPR is NYU’s federally funded research center developed to investigate models to enhance preparedness and response capabilities in high threat urban areas. LaSER was created as a research consortium from a wide range of disciplines and schools within NYU.