术语和俗语对疾病风险认知的影响

The Effect of Medical Terms and Colloquial to the Cognition of Disease Risk Perception

本研究采用混合实验设计,探讨疾病术语和俗语对疾病风险认知的影响,结果发现:对疾病严重性和患病率估计存在锚定效应,疾病名称和熟悉度主效应显著,熟悉度和疾病名称存在交互作用。研究表明:对疾病严重性估计术语高于俗语,对患病率估计俗语高于术语。Bootstrap法分析表明,疾病名称可直接影响严重性估计,也可通过患病率估计影响严重性估计。术语导致严重性高估,但若通过患病率估计再评估严重性时,俗语导致患病率高估,进而对严重性高估。

DDisease Risk Perception （DRP） is the subjective judgment or estimate that people make about the characteristics and severity of disease risks. Accurate DRP is an important predictor for medical decision and health behavior. It is harmful for disease prevention and rehabilitation when people overestimate or underestimate the situation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore factors affecting the DRP, including anchor, frame and familiarity degrees, by estimating the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases, in order to provide advice and help people form accurate DRP, and promote better and effective risk communication between doctors and patients. A mixed factor design was used in this experiment to explore how the disease name frame （medical jargon and colloquialism）, anchor value （high and low） and familiarity degree （high and low） affect the DRP by estimating the seriousness and prevalence rate of certain diseases in medical jargon or in colloquialism. 64 Subjects were randomly selected from university students with majors of Psychology, Education and Management Science, whose age is between 22~28 years old, and the average age is 24.9. The results found out that the anchoring effect was significant. The anchor value influenced significantly the DRP. The estimates of the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases in the high-anchor condition were higher than those in the low-anchor condition. The flaming effect was significant. Diseases described in medical terms were estimated severer than in colloquial language. The estimates of the disease prevalence rate in the medical terms condition were lower than those in the colloquial language condition. The familiarity degree influenced the DRP. The estimates of the seriousness of diseases in the low familiarity degree condition were higher than those in the high familiarity degree condition; but the estimates of the prevalence rate of the diseases in the low familiarity degree condition were lower than those in the high familiarity degree condition. Interaction existed between the familiarity degree and the name frame. In the high familiarity degree condition, the estimates of the seriousness of diseases in the colloquial condition were lower than those in the medical terms condition. The estimates of the prevalence rate of the disease in the high familiarity degree condition were higher than that in the low familiarity degree condition. But in the low familiarity degree condition, there was no significant difference between the med!cal jargon and colloquial conditions in the estimates of the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases. Further analysis with the bootstrap method found out that name flame could directly influence the severity estimates, or indirectly influence it by the estimate of the prevalence rate of diseases. Medical terms usually led to overestimate the seriousness of the disease. But if the seriousness of the disease was re-evaluated through the estimates of the prevalence rate, colloquial usually led to overestimating the prevalence rate of the disease, which further led to overestimating the seriousness of the disease. The study suggested that accurate communications between doctors and patients were important for DRP.