Major risks for life and their perception

Abstract

The aim of this thesis topic is to identify the major causes of deaths based on statistical data that were conducted in Cyprus and compare these results with people’s perception. The main goal of this research is to analyze the perception of individuals for the most common causes of deaths and understand the people’s point of view regarding this subject. The secondary goal is to identify the factors that may differentiate the perception of people for life threats and discover if an individual’s perception can be affected from sources of information regarding mortality risks.

With the use of an online survey, individuals throughout Cyprus from various demographics have participated in order to help answering those questions. Based on the results of those questionnaires, we have found that the majority of the participants in Cyprus have misconception about certain causes of death and this is mainly due to the sources of information coming from their personal environment (family, friends and colleagues) and from news channels such as television, internet, social media, radio etc.

In detail, Chapter 1 introduces the concept of risk in general and the formation of the theory of risk perception. Chapter 2 covers the literature review which is divided into two sections. The first section includes various studies associated to the research of risk perception and the second section presents studies regarding major risks in life and more specifically, the most common causes of death in Cyprus and other countries. Also, it contains some studies that examines the peoples’ perception about certain causes of death and the influence of sources of information regarding this subject.

Chapter 3 describes the methodology used to create the survey and outlines the form of the questionnaire. Chapter 4 illustrates the result analysis of the survey including the participants perception ranking table and charts that show the results of each question. Chapter 5 includes the discussion of the survey’s findings with references of the studies mentioned in the literature review and Chapter 6 presents the conclusion of this research.