Public health crisis as a stress test: examining the psychometric paradigm’s dimensionality across disease contexts

This study examines the structural stability of the psychometric paradigm, originally proposed in the 1970s to conceptualize the lay public’s perceptions of various risk objects, ranging from nuclear power to commercial aviation. Based on three datasets measuring the U.S. public’s perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines, the Monkeypox (Mpox) outbreak, and Mpox vaccines, exploratory factor analysis results indicated that the nine validated measures did not always load onto the dread and the unknown dimensions, as suggested by the psychometric paradigm. Instead, depending on the nature of the risk object, risk perceptions exhibited elusive yet discernible patterns. Among the nine variables, catastrophic impact, dread response, and fatal consequence consistently loaded onto the dread dimension, whereas unknown to the public and unknown to scientists consistently loaded onto the unknown dimension. Interestingly, lack of controllability and involuntary exposure loaded onto a third factor for half of the risk objects. These findings suggest that risk perception is a dynamic, multiplex construct, and that its measurement should be adaptable and contextualized.