This issue involves a change in the usual format of Health, Risk & Society with the inclusion of two articles that debate the continuing utility of risk for sociological.
Table of contents
- Perceived risk, real risk: social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment.
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- Social Science Basics – FAQs : NOAA Office of Performance, Risk & Social Science
- About Emily Holbrook
To understand this is to become a pioneer in understanding human behavior and its importance in developing an ever-evolving information security program.
Quite often I seen so-called scientific methods that are poorly transferred from the literature, applied in a suspect manner and in general not well understood. To be blunt, often the people discussing these methodologies may not have the academic or intellectual background to truly understand what they are trying to apply. Given this, it is no wonder that is difficult to fit the results into an overall risk management framework.
Perceived risk, real risk: social science and the art of probabilistic risk assessment.
In the end, if an organization is truly going to try to use a scientific approach, it should take the time to do it right with a lot of background reading and the development of real alternative solutions with a serious discussion about the risks and rewards. Does anyone have risk policies and procedures they could share? Or maybe a template for a risk manual? What we fail to realize is that the greatest strength in any security program CAN be a human being.
An organizations commitment to managing behavior requires a transformation that encompasses the entire organization. Can it start in a specific discipline , yes, but the vision needs to be clear that the methods can and should be applied everywhere. The authors outline, provisionally and illustratively, the value of drawing connections at both these levels. The first section summarises conceptual and theoretical discussions of risk, suggesting links and gaps between this work and social work writing on risk.
The second section illustrates how a wider research awareness of risk provides a strengthened purchase on, a critique of, and commitment to, the social purpose of social work. Risk is a concept which has received increasing attention, with recurring debates about the riskiness of certain actions, situations, and substances. Policy-making has increasingly centred on developing strategies for effective risk communication in a wide range of areas. Risk assessment and risk management have similarly become the preoccupation of several professional groups, including health, welfare and social workers.
Risk is part of the commonplace of social work education, conversation and practice.
Requirements to evidence competence in assessing, responding to and managing risk run through the requirements of social work qualifying programmes and requirements for the postqualifying award in social work CCETSW, , Descriptions and prescriptions for good practice in child protection, mental health, disability, older people and offenders insist that an informed understanding and response to issues of risk should characterise care management, specific and comprehensive assessments, inter-professional multi-disciplinarity, and user and carer participation in services.
For the moment we want to draw attention to two limitations of most social work discussions of risk. Second, there has been little or no connection made between policy and practice accounts of risk, and risk and research Fraser et al, ; White, We want to outline, provisionally and illustratively, the value of drawing connections at both these levels.
In the first part of the paper we summarise discussions regarding the conceptualisation of risk, and developments in theories of risk, especially from the social sciences. We halt this part of the paper with a cautious suggestion of links and gaps between this work and recent social work writing on risk. In the second part of the paper we aim to illustrate how a wider research awareness of risk — as central to the social, political, substantive and methodological contexts of disciplined inquiry — provides a strengthened purchase on, a critique of, and commitment to, the social purpose of social work.
We suggest that ideas of risk give shape and texture to research ethics, awareness of the political context for research, the uses of research, and the street-level fashioning of risk strategies in social work teams. Until the mid s the idea of risk tended to be treated as unproblematic within social work discourse. With the exception of the neglected earlier work of Brearley Brearley, , the meaning of risk was treated in a fairly taken-for granted manner.
Yet some basic distinctions have been accepted. First, the history of its use in the English language can be traced to the French term risque, derived from the Italian risco and riscare, meaning to run into danger Shorter Oxford Dictionary. Second, the general discrediting of positivist ideas of inquiry, associated with the assumption of the ability of science to fully represent reality, has led to widespread debate about the distinction between the reality and the perception of reality. This has been central to discussions of risk, with ongoing conceptual debates on the objective reality or subjective perception of risk cf MacDonald and MacDonald, Third, the literature on risk in social work has for some time made a distinction between risk as carried by the social worker and risk as ascribed to others by the social worker Brearley, Until more recently social work discussions of risk have also tended to regard the consolidation of practice based on risk assessment and management as generally benign or at least neutral.
More recent discussions have been marked by an increasing problematising of ideas of risk, prompted by the persistent note of disquiet that has surfaced Kemshall, ; Kemshall and Pritchard, ; Parsloe, ; Parton et al, ; Parton However, there are remaining ambiguities in meaning and conceptualisation Hayes, ; Wharton, Earlier meanings of risk incorporated both positive and negative outcomes. However, Douglas notes how risk has changed its meaning from its origins as a neutral term, and is now used only to refer to undesirable outcomes: In the scientific literature, risk is associated with mathematical theories of probability: However, in practice it is often an ambiguous term with varying meanings, e.
Similarly, within the social sciences, there are a range of conceptualisations: These inter-related terms include hazard, danger, harm, safety, vulnerability, dangerousness, blame and accountability.
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Finally, blame and accountability are key terms, where allocating blame is central to the identification of risk: These terms are particularly important within cultural theories of risk. Risk assessment is concerned with identifying the hazards which can cause an accident or disaster. Finally, risk taking and risk management are inter-linked, where risk-taking is about individual risk decisions, whereas risk management is concerned with collective or institutional responses to risk situations.
Before noting the characteristic uses of risk within the welfare and social work literature, and considering risk issues in social work research, we will briefly outline the ways in which social scientists have approached the study of risk. Cognitive psychology has dominated research on risk perceptions since the s and s. Key work in this tradition includes Slovic et al and Tversky and Kahneman They used quantitative methodology, namely questionnaires and psychometric techniques, to examine differences between lay and expert assessments of risks from certain dangers.
They concluded that lay people have difficulty in making accurate or rational assessments of risk because they are poor at probabilistic thinking. In contrast, expert judgements of risk are seen as more closely related to statistical frequencies and formal probability calculations. Gabe argues that the cognitive approach has been useful because it has helped to clarify the properties people include in their risk judgements. However, it has been criticised for treating risk as a purely objective reality, masking uncertainties in assessment of risk through the use of quantitative methods, and failing to recognise that risks are experienced within specific social and cultural contexts Nelkin, ; Turner and Wynne, Cultural theories attempt to address the wider cultural and political contexts of risk.
They originate with anthropological work by Douglas , which was developed further in her joint work with Wildavsky The central thesis is that societies selectively choose certain risks for attention. Grid and group are organisational variables, and Douglas and Wildavsky propose that four cultural types will result from scoring a society as high or low on each variable: This typology of cultures has relevance for risk situations by indicating that the social organisation of each type of cultural system will make its members sensitive to different risk situations, and will lead to the favouring of characteristically different decision-making strategies.
However, there are major criticisms of cultural theories Renn; ; Rayner, Some have argued that the types are too simplistic, masking complexities and variations: In recent years there has been a great increase in sociological interest in risk. Like anthropologists, sociologists start from the premise that risk is socially constructed and collectively perceived Gabe, Key social theorists on risk include Giddens and Beck For Beck, risk has become a means by which society deals with the hazards and insecurities that have been introduced by the processes of modernisation.
He particularly draws attention to the social and political dynamics of risk. Products once thought to be harmless turn out to be dangerous, and sources of wealth once admired emerge as unpredictable sources of danger. Risks develop political potential as they are seen as having social, economic and political consequences for which someone must take responsibility.
The issue of knowledge of risk is an important aspect, as the invisibility of risks means that ordinary people are reliant on conflicting expert scientific sources for knowledge of hazards. This theory of risk society has been highly influential, and several social theorists have commented on its significance, as well as critiquing some of its basic premises Wynne, It has also impacted upon wider policy debates about risk Franklin, Against this theoretical background, the need for sociological risk research has been highlighted Douglas, ; Kronenfeld and Glick, ; Turner and Wynne, Sociological research on risk perception and risk behaviour has used an interpretative methodological approach, examining how people interpret and respond to risk within the constraints of their daily lives.
Sociologists have also been concerned with social and political aspects of risk communication. Research has focused on the framing of risk debates by social institutions and groups such as the media Kitzinger, ; Kitzinger and Reilly, , and the complex technical and political choices involved in communicating uncertain scientific risk information Nelkin, Discourses on risk are argued to serve ideological and political functions by blaming individuals or groups who may be seen as posing a risk to others Lupton, Certain institutions may have particular power to define risk e.
Having outlined the way risk has been conceptualised and studied across a range of social science disciplines, we turn now to briefly consider its use in the context of social welfare policy and practice.
We have already noted how recent writing on risk on social work practice has taken a sceptical turn, and consequently been marked by attention to previously taken-for-granted aspects of the ways risk assessment and management operate in social work. In particular, several writers have reflected on social welfare developments, arguing that concerns with risk assessment and risk management have replaced a focus on needs to become the driving force behind service provision Burke, ; Kemshall et al, ; Parton, ; Parton et al, ; Waterson, While risk analysis is most prominent in the criminal justice and child protection fields, the mental health field, through preoccupations with notions of dangerousness, has also adopted risk terminology.
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The general argument of these writers is that as issues of rationing and accountability become more dominant, so do concerns with risk. Discourses around risk and risk assessment can be identified across a range of areas of social care and social work Burke, ; Beaumont, ; Caddick and Watson, ; Stevenson, ; Waterson, Yet they are perhaps most prominently seen in the areas of child welfare Parton, ; Sargent, , and mental health work Langan, In child welfare, risk is closely associated with the idea of significant harm, which underpins the Children Act The underlying policy principle is that risks to vulnerable service users are to be identified, measured and controlled.
In the field of mental health work, the concern is primarily with risk factors which allow prediction of whether an individuals poses a risk to others e. Yet the use of the risk assessment approach in this context is problematic, as it is very difficult for mental health workers to accurately predict risk, and keep up-to-date with knowledge about risk factors.
Further, an individualised perspective on risk factors fails to take into account the complex contextual nature of risk, shaped by social, economic and political factors Langan, Blame and accountability are also key risk-related concepts becoming increasingly prevalent in social work discourses. Parton argues that concepts of risk have shaped the way social workers organize themselves and are organized by others.
Different organizational systems of accountability and blame have emerged. Within these systems, social workers are increasingly made responsible for risk management, faced by the threat of blame when things go wrong, when vulnerable individuals or wider society are conceived to have been placed at risk from people defined as dangerous.
However, the focus on risk in social work, with its emphasis on accurate risk assessment and prediction, has been criticised by some. Therefore, greater focus on notions of uncertainty and ambiguity is called for in social welfare work, where much experience is not characterized by scientific calculations of risk, but imbued with intuition and uncertainty:. Given the mobile character of the social world and the mutable and frequently controversial nature of abstract systems of knowledge, most forms of risk assessment contain numerous imponderables.
Uncertainty and controversy are built into the knowledge, policies and practices concerned with risk. So, drawing on these wider risk debates within the social sciences and increased concern with risk within social welfare policy and practice, what are some implications for social work research? The key themes emerging from these risk debates which may impact how we think about social work research can be summarised as follows:. Conceptual and methodological debates about risk within psychology, cultural theory and sociology cause us to re-evaluate and problematise the use of the term risk within social work policy and practice.
They also pose questions for social work research. Conceptual discussions of risk highlight the need to problematise the risk terminology used within social work, and consider the close inter-relationships between an array of risk-related terms. Social science risk research poses questions about the methodologies and methods used within social work research, which may be rooted in assumptions about risk as objective and quantifiable, or subjective and social.
More specifically, debate regarding risk and society develops the agenda for risk and social work research in several directions.
About Emily Holbrook
First, it pushes us to think about research ethics in a risk context. Researchers are members of the risk society and not outside observers. Their own expertise is just as much on the line as that of practitioners. Conceptual, theoretical and empirical work within the social sciences has provided a rich source of critical debate about risk. While social work writing on risk has generally failed to draw on this, a minority of key writers such as Parton e.
Drawing attention to the centrality of uncertainty to considerations of risk within social work, Parton points to a key consequence, in that service users, researchers and practitioners share aspects of this inherent uncertainty, which shapes and partly justifies collaborative and user led research. Having considered risk debates within the social sciences and social work policy and practice, and drawn out some tentative general ideas about the way these impact on social work research, we now turn to consider in more detail how a wider awareness of risk may enrich the understanding and conduct of social work research.
We will focus in particular on four areas which to date have remained unexplored in social work writings on risk: In each of these areas, we will draw on specific examples of social work research which illustrate these ideas. Discussions of research ethics in social work have been seriously underdeveloped.
For example, while we are reluctant to suggest additional layering of decision-making mechanisms, we believe that decision-making on ethical aspects of social work research has been skewed and narrowed by the assumption that local and multi-site medical ethics committees are the appropriate location for regulating ethical aspects of such research. Questions of research ethics frequently turn on issues of risk, consent and trust. Some men knew of his research and others did not. Under the general rubric of human freedom, Warwick outlines the potential risks and benefits to human freedom of conducting research.