Competing perspectives on public involvement: Planning for risk characterization and risk communication about radiological contamination from a national laboratory

Abstract

Public involvement is increasingly emphasized as part of government agencies' responses to environmental health hazards, including risk characterization and risk communication. For example, there is a growing body of literature on health and risk communication proposing best practices and evaluating processes, yet there has been little attention to the ways that preferences for process features and criteria for evaluating success may vary among stakeholders and between stakeholders and government agency staff. This paper reports on a study into how participants associated with an effort to address public health risks from the distribution of plutonium contaminated sewage sludge in Livermore, California, think about the most appropriate way to conduct a process integrating public involvement. Using Q method this paper identifies five perspectives about what constitutes a good collaborative process in this case. The lessons for organizers and participants of risk characterization and risk communication efforts when people subscribe to different (sometimes competing) perspectives about process are discussed.