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pp.141-152
This study provides a national examination on youths' 'understanding' of irradiated food. The 1,200 subjects of the survey were randomly sampled from male and female students throughout the nation, between grades five and eleven. The survey was conducted toward these samples in November 2000. The number of respondents with exposure to irradiated food was so small, amounting to only 4.0 percent of the whole sample. The core concept used in this study is 'impression'. An impression is information about a specific subject, which carries significance to an individual. The results show that the higher the grade was, the more value the contents of impression contained. Furthermore, impressions concerning atomic or nuclear energy, and radioactivity increased greatly among students in middle school and above. Providing information of effects and advantages of irradiated food was focused to increase positive impressions and decrease the negative ones more greatly than providing simple factual information. Youths showed less value-centered impressions of irradiated food and more impressions centered on fragmented facts than adults. Respondents previously exposed irradiated food were shown to acquire the most of their information from the television and newspaper media. Among six information sources presented in the survey, youths pointed out 'science and technology research institutes' as the most credible. International organizations and environmental/ consumer organizations were evaluated as having relatively high credibility. Providing simple factual information of irradiated food did not seem to bring about any difference to the intention of purchasing irradiated food. On the other hand, respondents provided with effects-included information showed an increase in such intention. Our research results of the youth show a notable difference with that of the adults. Thus, programs and strategies to enhance youths' understanding should differ from those concerning adults.
