Glossary · 6 · Warnings and risk communication
Communication-human information processing model (C-HIP)
Also known as: C-HIP model, C-HIP
German: C-HIP-Modell
In warnings research, the communication-human information processing model (C-HIP) describes how a warning travels from a source through one or more channels to a receiver and then through the receiver's stages of attention switch, attention maintenance, comprehension and memory, beliefs and attitudes, and motivation to behavior, with each stage a potential bottleneck (Michael S. Wogalter and colleagues).
- Applied cognitive psychology
- Warnings and risk communication
In one sentence
The C-HIP model traces a warning from source and channel through attention, comprehension, beliefs, motivation to behavior; each stage can fail.
Example
An investigation of a jam-clearing injury uses C-HIP: the warning label was present (source, channel) and noticed (attention), but operators believed the guard interlock would stop the machine (beliefs), so the warning failed at the beliefs stage, not at the label.
Rests on
- Human information processing: C-HIP decomposes the receiver of the communication model into processing stages.
- Selective attention and Salience (cognitive psychology): a warning first has to switch attention to itself and then hold it.
- Heuristics and biases and risk perception: beliefs and attitudes decide whether an understood warning is believed and acted on.
How it applies
- Diagnosing a warning: For each stage ask whether the warning can fail there: Is it delivered where and when the hazard is met (source, channel)? Does it stand out (attention switch)? Is it legible and brief enough to be read (attention maintenance)? Do readers understand hazard, consequence and avoidance (comprehension)? Do they believe it applies to them (beliefs)? Is the required action practicable (motivation)? Do they act (behavior)?
- Design of safety messages: The stages map onto the parts of a warning message and the criteria of safety information usability: placement at the point of hazard, signal word and symbol, hazard, consequence and avoidance, actions that can be carried out.
- Signs and labels: For a safety sign the channel is the machine itself; location and visibility belong to the model's first stages.
- Feedback: Later versions of the model include feedback between stages, for example beliefs influencing attention.
Limits
- C-HIP is a descriptive framework for organizing research and investigations, not a quantitative model; passing every stage in a review does not show that a warning works.
- Warnings are the last measure in the hierarchy of risk reduction. The model helps to design and evaluate them; it never decides whether a hazard may be addressed by a warning instead of by design or safeguarding, which is decided in the risk assessment.