Spanish Journal of Psychology (2014), 17, e51, 1–12. © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid doi:10.1017/sjp.2014.55 Employers, employees, safety managers, trade unions, company insurance funds and politicians are some of the stakeholders who share the objective to improve occupational health and safety. Nevertheless, problems arise when different stakeholders have not a common understanding about occupational risks (Holmes, Lingard, Yesilyurt, & de Munk, 1999; Sadhra, Petts, McAlpine, Pattison, & MacRae, 2002). Differences in the way that experts and non-experts judge risk have been documented in several areas (Kraus, Malform, & Slovic, 1992; Lee, Mehta, & James, 2003; Savadori et al., 2004). Sjöberg (1999) has eloquently summarized the main crash of ideas: “Experts see the public as misin- formed, badly educated and highly emotional (…) while the public suspects that experts know less than they claim and that they are corrupt due to their being hired by the industry or government” (p. 5). A debate about the convenience to complement “technical” risk research (as done in natural sciences or economics) with social-scientific approaches has been ongoing (Goldstein, 2005). The logic is that each approach captures a different, and only partial, aspect of the complex and multidimensional reality. Both are needed to produce a comprehensive account of the nature and extent of risk and to help decision makers to make better and more informed decisions. This combination provides the basis for a participatory approach in risk management and risk communication as a way for designing, selecting and implementing policy alternatives that are more likely to be widely accepted by a variety of stakeholders (Mereu, Sardu, Minerba, Sotgiu, & Contu, 2007). Much risk communication research is formulated at the social or public level and it does not contribute to spread the use of the concepts of risk communication within the organization in order to prevent workplace illness and injury (Real, 2008). The focus of the present study was on the healthcare workplace. Health services are one of the fundamental sectors of the society and the economy, employing around 10% of all workers throughout the European Union (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2007). Healthcare workers are exposed to biological, chemical, ergonomic, organi- zational and psychosocial hazards. What makes the Characterizing Occupational Risk Perception: the Case of Biological, Ergonomic and Organizational Hazards in Spanish Healthcare Workers Mariona Portell 1 , Rosa M. Gil 2 , Josep M. Losilla 1 and Jaume Vives 1 1 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) 2 Grupo Sagessa (Spain) Abstract. Understanding how risk is perceived by workers is necessary for effective risk communication and risk man- agement. This study adapts key elements of the psychometric perspective to characterize occupational risk perception at a worker level. A total of 313 Spanish healthcare workers evaluated relevant hazards in their workplaces related to biological, ergonomic and organizational factors. A questionnaire elicited workers' ratings of 3 occupational hazards on 9 risk attributes along with perceived risk. Factor and regression analyses reveal regularities in how different risks are perceived, while, at the same time, the procedure helps to summarize specificities in the perception of each hazard. The main regularity is the weight of feeling of dread/severity in order to characterize the risk perceived (β ranges from .22 to .41; p < .001). Data also suggest an underestimation of expert knowledge in relation to the personal knowledge of risk. Thus, participants consider their knowledge of the risk related to biological, ergonomic, and organizational hazards to be higher than the knowledge attributed to the occupational experts (mean differences 95% CIs [.10, .30], [.54, .94], and [0.52, 1.05]). We demonstrate the application of a feasible and systematic procedure to capture how workers perceive hazards in their immediate work environment. Received 27 February 2012; Revised 4 March 2013; Accepted 13 September 2013 Keywords: occupational health, risk perception, risk communication, psychometric paradigm, healthcare workers. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mariona Portell. Department of Psychobiology and Methodology of Health Sciences. Edificio B. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. 08193. Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain). Phone: +34–935811623. Fax: + 34–935812001. E-mail: mariona.portell@uab.cat We are very grateful for the cooperation of Grupo SAGESSA. We are also grateful for the comments and interest expressed by Etienne Mullet, M. Dolors Solé and Eduard Gaynés. This research was funded in part by grant PSI2010–16270 from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors.