Scaling the Severity of Potential Injuries and Illnesses

Abstract

Warning researchers have established a relationship between the explicitness of warnings and perceptions of product hazardousness and precautionary behavior. Earlier work demonstrated that two warning qualities, injury severity and length of injury, contributed to hazard perceptions. To understand further the hazard conveying qualities of warnings, it is necessary to scale potential injuries and illnesses that might result from product use. Fifty-eight different injuries and illnesses were paired with three different modifiers, mild, moderate, and severe. Severity ratings were obtained from 25 participants using a free-modulus magnitude estimation technique. The resulting ratings were then scaled to produce a continuum of illnesses and injury conditions.