Compare methods

	Risk Perception Survey (Psychometric Paradigm)	Climate Vulnerability Index
Field	Environmental Sociology	Environmental Sociology
Family	Latent structure	MCDM
Year of origin	1987	2003
Originator	Baruch Fischhoff & Paul Slovic; Paul Slovic	Susan L. Cutter (social vulnerability); IPCC framing via Smit & Wandel
Type	Survey-and-factor measurement of perceived risk	Composite index aggregating exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity
Seminal source	Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of Risk. Science, 236(4799), 280-285.	Cutter, S. L., Boruff, B. J., & Shirley, W. L. (2003). Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards. Social Science Quarterly, 84(2), 242-261.
Aliases	Psychometric Paradigm, Perceived Risk Survey, Dread-Unknown Risk Mapping, Slovic Risk Perception Method	Composite Climate Vulnerability Index, Climate Risk and Vulnerability Index, IPCC Vulnerability Composite, Social Vulnerability to Climate Index
Related	3	4
Summary	The risk perception survey, or psychometric paradigm, measures how laypeople intuitively judge the riskiness of hazards by having respondents rate many activities and technologies on a battery of qualitative risk characteristics. Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, and colleagues introduced the approach in their 1978 study 'How Safe Is Safe Enough?', and Slovic's 1987 Science synthesis 'Perception of Risk' established it as the dominant empirical framework for studying risk attitudes. The central finding is that perceived risk is highly predictable from a handful of qualities — above all how dreaded and how unknown a hazard feels — rather than from expert estimates of expected fatalities. Factor analysis of the characteristic ratings collapses the many attributes into a low-dimensional cognitive map, typically a 'dread' and an 'unknown risk' axis, in which each hazard occupies a position. Where a hazard falls in this space predicts public concern, desired regulation, and acceptance far better than its statistical death toll. The method gave environmental and technological controversy a measurable psychological structure and remains foundational to risk communication.	A climate vulnerability index is a composite indicator that combines measures of exposure to climate hazards, sensitivity to those hazards, and adaptive capacity into a single comparable score for places or populations. The conceptual backbone is the IPCC framing, articulated clearly by Smit and Wandel, in which vulnerability rises with exposure and sensitivity and falls with the capacity to adapt. The measurement machinery owes much to Susan Cutter's Social Vulnerability Index, which showed how to select, normalize, and statistically reduce many socioeconomic variables into a defensible index of who is most at risk. A climate vulnerability index merges these traditions: it assembles biophysical exposure indicators with social sensitivity and adaptive-capacity indicators, puts them on a common scale, and aggregates them. The output ranks counties, communities, or households so that scarce adaptation resources can be targeted. Because it is a composite, every step, indicator choice, normalization, weighting, embeds judgments that must be made transparent.