Younger adults tolerate more relational risks in everyday life as revealed by the general risk-taking questionnaire

Abstract

A range of self-report questionnaires were developed to quantify one’s risk-taking (RT) tendency. Exploring people’s perceived risk level associated with negative risk behaviors is essential to develop a better understanding and intervention policies for RT. In the present study, we proposed a 2 × 10-item scale, namely, the general risk-taking questionnaire (GRTQ), to evaluate RT tendency and risk attitude among the general population by measuring people’s engagement in and perceptions toward 10 commonly known risky behaviors. A total of 2984 adults residing in 10 prefectures in Japan (age range = 20–59, 53.12% female) provided valid responses to an online survey. Apart from the factor analysis procedures, multivariate negative binomial regression models have been applied to investigate the relationship between RT engagement and perception. We obtained two identical factors, namely, personal risk and relational risk, for both scales of the GRTQ. Increased levels of RT engagement were found in younger, male, nonmarried, nonparent and urban respondents. Despite an overall negative correlation between RT engagement and perception, our model revealed a weaker linkage in the younger population for relational risk behaviors. Overall, we showed evidence that the GRTQ is an easy-to-administer, valid and reliable measure of RT for future clinical research.