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Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America

BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s percept...

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Autores principales: Cortés, Sandra, Burgos, Soledad, Adaros, Héctor, Lucero, Boris, Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8394931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444349
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168600
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author Cortés, Sandra
Burgos, Soledad
Adaros, Héctor
Lucero, Boris
Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam
author_facet Cortés, Sandra
Burgos, Soledad
Adaros, Héctor
Lucero, Boris
Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam
author_sort Cortés, Sandra
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s perception of environmental health hazards is a powerful driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors and can also inform the development of effective and more sustainable environmental health policies. To date, no instruments are available to assess risk perception of environmental health hazards in South America even though there are many concerning issues in the region, including mining. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to adapt and validate an environmental health risk perception questionnaire in a Chilean population affected by mining activity among other risks frequently reported in Latin American countries and included the collection of information on trust on public information sources. METHODS: We adapted an Australian risk perception questionnaire for validation in an adult population from a Chilean mining community. This adaptation included two blinded translations (direct, inverse), a pre-test study (n = 20) and a review by environmental health experts. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) was used to identify factors within major domains of interest. The Bartlett test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and the Cronbach α test were used to assess the instrument’s validity and reliability. The instrument was pilot tested in 205 adults from a mining community in Chañaral. RESULTS: The final adapted questionnaire proved to be a good instrument to measure risk perception in a community chronically exposed to mining waste. For community risks, four factors explained 59.4% of the variance. “Global Issues” (30.2%) included air pollution, contamination of mining, ozone layer depletion and vector diseases. For personal risks, the first two components explained 59.5% of the variance, the main factor (36.7%) was “unhealthy behaviors within the household”. For trust in information, the first factor (36.2%) included as main sources “Media and authorities”. The Cronbach α ranged between 0.68 and 0.75; and the KMO test between 0.7 to 0.79 for community and personal risks and trust. CONCLUSIONS: The final questionnaire is a simple, reliable and useful instrument that can assist in evaluating environmental health risk perceptions in Latin American countries.
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spelling pubmed-83949312021-08-28 Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America Cortés, Sandra Burgos, Soledad Adaros, Héctor Lucero, Boris Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam Int J Environ Res Public Health Article BACKGROUND: Environmental risk assessments and interventions to mitigate environmental risks are essential to protect public health. While the objective measurement of environmental hazards is important, it is also critical to address the subjective perception of health risks. A population’s perception of environmental health hazards is a powerful driving force for action and engagement in safety and health behaviors and can also inform the development of effective and more sustainable environmental health policies. To date, no instruments are available to assess risk perception of environmental health hazards in South America even though there are many concerning issues in the region, including mining. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to adapt and validate an environmental health risk perception questionnaire in a Chilean population affected by mining activity among other risks frequently reported in Latin American countries and included the collection of information on trust on public information sources. METHODS: We adapted an Australian risk perception questionnaire for validation in an adult population from a Chilean mining community. This adaptation included two blinded translations (direct, inverse), a pre-test study (n = 20) and a review by environmental health experts. Principal Component Analyses (PCA) was used to identify factors within major domains of interest. The Bartlett test of sphericity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure and the Cronbach α test were used to assess the instrument’s validity and reliability. The instrument was pilot tested in 205 adults from a mining community in Chañaral. RESULTS: The final adapted questionnaire proved to be a good instrument to measure risk perception in a community chronically exposed to mining waste. For community risks, four factors explained 59.4% of the variance. “Global Issues” (30.2%) included air pollution, contamination of mining, ozone layer depletion and vector diseases. For personal risks, the first two components explained 59.5% of the variance, the main factor (36.7%) was “unhealthy behaviors within the household”. For trust in information, the first factor (36.2%) included as main sources “Media and authorities”. The Cronbach α ranged between 0.68 and 0.75; and the KMO test between 0.7 to 0.79 for community and personal risks and trust. CONCLUSIONS: The final questionnaire is a simple, reliable and useful instrument that can assist in evaluating environmental health risk perceptions in Latin American countries. MDPI 2021-08-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8394931/ /pubmed/34444349 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168600 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Cortés, Sandra
Burgos, Soledad
Adaros, Héctor
Lucero, Boris
Quirós-Alcalá, Lesliam
Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title_full Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title_fullStr Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title_full_unstemmed Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title_short Environmental Health Risk Perception: Adaptation of a Population-Based Questionnaire from Latin America
title_sort environmental health risk perception: adaptation of a population-based questionnaire from latin america
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8394931/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34444349
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168600
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