Risk Assessment: Tools, Techniques, and Their Applications

16.3 Risk Assessment Perspective

Now that we have looked at both, qualitative and quantitative research methods, we now talk about the part they play in dealing with risk assessment. Risk is applied across various organizations and varying circumstances, which does not have the same meaning across the various disciplines, organizations, or even individuals. In other words, there is not a “one size fits all” risk assessment method. One thing they do agree on is the term risk carries a negative connotation such as destruction, harm, or some undesirable event. Risk, as we have talked about in other chapters, possesses unknown and unpredictable results or consequences so there is that “uncertainty” element. With qualitative research, we try to piece the event or story back together through the different forms of research such as narrative research. Once we reconstruct the pieces, we can then analyze those pieces and that is where the quantitative research methods come into play. Without the gathering of information and piecing together, we could not perform any statistical analysis because the data just would not exist.

Some form of risk assessment is used to make decisions and deciding how much effort should be directed toward avoiding undesirable events. A valid risk analysis should have a procedure in place to determine the appropriate consequence and likelihood levels. When talking about qualitative analyses, this would mean having adequate descriptions for each of the levels of ...