My research program has two primary focuses: effective communication of scientific uncertainty and mitigation of psychological reactance in health contexts. I’m especially interested in advancing theory in both areas. I love collaborating on research, so please feel free to reach out.
(1) Communicating Scientific Uncertainty
This research is the main focus of the Communicating Uncertain Science to the Public (CUSP) lab and has two aims. The first aim is to examine how scientific uncertainty is currently portrayed to the public and/or prospective research participants. The second aim is to test whether current communication practices produce unintended effects (e.g., loss of public trust, unrealistic expectations for science, research participant attrition) that could be remedied through improved ways of communicating about scientific complexity and uncertainty.
Related projects and publications:
- In progress: “Public Understanding of Precision Medicine Research: A Qualitative Analysis of Lay Perceptions”
- In progress: Public understanding of scientific preprints: A multi-study mixed-methods investigation
- Top student paper award to CUSP grad student Rebekah Wicke at 2022 Society for Risk Analysis annual meeting for “Investigating the Influence of Preprints in COVID-19 news coverage on vaccine booster intentions”
- Ratcliff, C. L. & Wicke, R. (2022). How the public evaluates media representations of uncertain science: An integrated explanatory framework. Public Understanding of Science.
- Awarded a top four faculty paper award with CUSP grad student Rebekah Wicke from the Communicating Science, Health, Environment & Risk (comSHER) division of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication
- Ratcliff, C. L., Wicke, R., & Harvill, B. (2022). Communicating uncertainty to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review of the literature. Annals of the International Communication Association.
- Ratcliff, C. L. (2021). Communicating scientific uncertainty across the dissemination trajectory: A precision medicine case study. Science Communication.
- Ratcliff, C. L., Wong, B., Jensen, J. D., & Kaphingst, K. A. (2021). The impact of communicating uncertainty on public responses to precision medicine research. Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
- Our research featured in an editorial from ABM about the importance of examining communication of uncertainty in precision medicine.
- Ratcliff, C. L., Jensen, J. D., Christy, K., R., Crossley, K., & Krakow, M. (2018). News coverage of cancer research: Does disclosure of scientific uncertainty enhance credibility? In H. D. O’Hair (Ed.), Risk and health communication in an evolving media environment. New York: Routledge. [Pre-print]
(2) Mitigating Reactance in Health Contexts
Psychological reactance occurs when individuals feel their autonomy is being threatened, such as by invasive or overtly persuasive communication approaches. My recent projects include:
Reactance to Persuasive Health Appeals
- In progress: Investigating reactance to visual features of public health messages
- Ratcliff, C. L. (2021). Characterizing reactance in communication research: A review of conceptual and operational approaches. Communication Research.
- Ratcliff, C. L. & Sun, Y. (2020) Overcoming resistance through narratives: Findings from a meta-analytic review. Human Communication Research.
- Ratcliff, C. L., Jensen, J. D., Scherr, C. L., Krakow, M., & Crossley, K. (2019). Loss/gain framing, dose, and reactance: A message experiment. Risk Analysis.
Reactance to Highly Tailored Health Information
Planned research will look at whether reactance can arise from hypertailored health communication (e.g., in precision medicine). Related projects include:
