Understanding public perceptions of health information is of increasing importance in the light of the growing imperatives upon regulators to communicate information about risk and uncertainty. Communicating the possible health risks from mobile telecommunications is a domain that allows consideration of both public perceptions of uncertain public health information and public responses to precautionary advice. This research reports the results of a nationally representative survey in the UK (n=1742) that explored public responses to a leaflet issued by the Department of Health (DoH) in 2000 providing information about the possible health risks of mobile phones. The aims of the study were two-fold: (a) to assess awareness of the leaflet and the extent to which participants could identify the precautionary advice that the leaflet contained as coming from the Government; and (b) to examine publics' responses to the current Government precautionary advice about mobile phone health risks; was this associated with increased concern or reassurance? The results indicate the importance of policy makers developing a clear understanding of the possible effects of communicating precautionary advice.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 June 2012.
All research outputs
#6,087,087
of 27,780,120 outputs
Outputs from Health Policy
#972
of 3,024 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#25,672
of 180,705 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Health Policy
#8
of 20 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,780,120 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 74th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,024 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.4. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 180,705 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 20 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 35th percentile – i.e., 35% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
