Well how could you have KNOWN better if you had never experienced any real effects of things that are hot even though you had been told things were hot all of your life and knew that hot meant bad or could have some adverse consequences should you come in contact with that sensation. Again I know this is an extreme example but I think it helps me to illustrate my point perfectly about the difference between awareness and knowledge.
Let me say that age has nothing to do with knowledge only experience does. Using the coffee example again now that you have had an actual experience with the sensation of hot you will use more caution around all of those things you had been warned were hot all of your life because you now KNOW what hot can do.
You will do better as you KNOW better so lighten up on yourself. And oh yeah that coffee example can be applied to any situation in your life. Unknown May 17, at AM. Although they might be dismissed as minimally frustrating, and perhaps in some cases as trivial editorial oversights on the part of authors, distinct problems arise if knowledge and awareness are intended to demarcate clearly identifiable and distinct conceptual and empirical domains.
One area in which this might occur is in research about whether or not knowledge and awareness—whatever those words might mean—parallel each other, for example, whether knowledge about obesity is related to awareness about obesity, or whether greater awareness about obesity leads to greater knowledge about it.
Problems also arise if there is an intention to relate knowledge and awareness, independently, to other variables including health-relevant behavior; physical, psychological, or socioeconomic statuses; gender; age; or ethnic backgrounds.
Relevant research questions might focus on whether awareness is a sufficient determinant, or whether their knowledge is a stronger determinant, when encouraging people to adopt behavior that avoids obesity. Research questions such as these, and there are many more, reveal that at times there is an obvious need for definitional clarity concerning knowledge and awareness. In this brief article, suggestions are made about achieving that clarity, beginning with an exploration of definitions that are provided in dictionaries.
These definitions are helpful because they reveal the foundations of conceptual problems that typify some research, but they also provide an avenue for achieving a solution when a distinction between knowledge and awareness is needed. This article concludes with some fundamental suggestions about measurement of knowledge and awareness as separate domains. For the word knowledge, primary entries in five online dictionaries 36 — 40 provide definitions that meet commonly held understandings and appear to be implicitly accepted by many researchers.
Together, they indicate that knowledge comprises information that is acquired from authoritative external sources and that can therefore, presumably, be regarded as factual in nature.
In the context of health, this information often falls within the purview of public health and epidemiology. It includes, where appropriate, knowledge about prevalence, etiology, risk factors, prevention, transmission, pathophysiology, symptomatology, progression, recommended action in the presence or event of specific health problems, treatment, precautions, sequelae, existence and availability of healthcare services, and patient rights.
It might, therefore, be anticipated that researchers who investigate knowledge, which has been referred to by McCallum et al. Some researchers 8 , 11 , 12 clearly do so. For them, it is evident that knowledge refers solely to specific information that is factual in nature. There are obvious problems, however, with the word awareness, particularly concerning how it might be differentiated from knowledge. There it can be seen that, for all five dictionaries, the word awareness predominates as a secondary way of defining knowledge, thus demonstrating a manifest overlap of meanings between the two words.
An attempt to distinguish between knowledge and awareness remains difficult when the primary definitions for awareness are sought from all five dictionaries. A clear distinction between knowledge and awareness therefore appears to be elusive, and awareness certainly appears to be strongly associated with knowledge. As a result, it is not surprising that many researchers, whether intentionally or not, use the two words as if they are semantically interchangeable, and other researchers use the words in ways that are intended to be different but the difference is not made explicit or is not sustained.
Partial resolution can be achieved by regarding the McCallum et al. According to this perspective, knowledge and awareness are not qualitatively different. They simply occupy opposite positions on a single continuum—a knowledge continuum.
This appears to be the usual way in which the words knowledge and awareness are used in relation to each other, although that is almost never made explicit. This might be referred to as a knowledge domain. All of these words are differently nuanced among themselves, but without exception they contain strong elements of personalization, a self-focus, and personal familiarity, that are not present in the more impersonal, detached, and allegedly factual nature of information that is typically associated with the word knowledge.
The proposal being put forward here is that there is a particular kind of awareness—one that is personal in nature—that could be regarded in some contexts as the specific, and different, referent when the word awareness is used. More specifically, this kind of awareness might be regarded as referring to a domain that spans the extent of personal engagement or concern. This might be referred to as an awareness domain.
If theorists and researchers accept the existence of the above two domains, in particular the two different types of awareness, they could avoid much conceptual and empirical ambiguity when knowledge and awareness need to be regarded as distinctly different from each other. Having identified a specific kind of awareness, one that has a strong personal element, it becomes readily possible to identify domains within health research to which it would refer.
These include attentive self-perceptions about conditions related to health, whether accurate or not e. Dokubo et al. This need not be difficult to achieve. For example, Medieros and Ramada 6 asked university students whether they had ever heard of human papillomavirus HPV.
If the students had not heard of this virus i. If, however, the students had heard about HPV they were asked subsequent, more specific, questions to assess the extent of their knowledge about it. If respondents indicated that they were not aware about a particular topic in any ways that were personally relevant to them, they would be given the lowest score on that domain at the LPA pole to represent no personal awareness or concern , and there would be no need to ask further questions to tap that domain.
The more that, in light of further questioning, respondents were aware about their own personal association with the particular topic of interest, the higher their score would be for this kind of awareness thus moving toward the HPA pole that represents high personal awareness. Anticipating and applying these straightforward psychometric strategies could generate much-needed clarity in some conceptual and empirical contexts.
Procedures for developing, as well as for establishing, the psychometric credentials of instruments in health research 41 — 43 are beyond the intended scope of this article. A number of issues require careful thought on the part of instrument developers, and the most effective strategies are not always obvious or easily implemented.
With regard to the validity of responses that are elicited from respondents, issues arise about whether to offer open-ended recall-dependent or fixed recognition-dependent options, and, if the latter, how many and what kind of options should be provided.
For many researchers 2 , 4 , 6 , 11 , 15 , 20 , 26 , 28 — 30 , assessing knowledge has been attempted by compiling a list of items e.
Although this recall-dependent strategy is usually regarded as acceptable, Hunt [ 44 , p. Other strategies are worth pursuing. They include use of tailored Likert-type options that are deemed most suitable for particular items. Possibilities and issues related to scoring also need to be addressed carefully to maximize validity.
However, in other situations, that scoring strategy might not capture a construct adequately or appropriately. In questions assessing knowledge, for example, validity might be enhanced if higher scores were assigned to correct responses on questions that refer to more important aspects of a construct and lower scores to less important aspects, as done by Sarumathi et al. It might be advisable, however, to allocate a higher score to a Yes response than to a No response under some circumstances involving personal awareness, but careful thought would need to be exercised concerning that strategy in concert with the aims of a particular piece of research.
It is obvious that defining, writing about, and measuring knowledge and awareness, if those two words are to be meaningful and useful in public health research, requires more care than initially seems necessary.
Applying that care should not only avoid conceptual confusion and misguided quantification where they might otherwise exist, but also create improved prospects for more definitive and refined research findings. RT conceived of, conducted the research for, and wrote the complete manuscript.
The author declares that this research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Trisha Nishat ignited my interest in this topic. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Front Public Health v. Front Public Health. Published online Aug 7. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Epidemiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health. Received Jun 22; Accepted Jul The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.
No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Keywords: knowledge, awareness, public health, health beliefs, health behavior, healthcare, epidemiology. Introduction The words knowledge and awareness are sometimes juxtaposed in public health research literature. I wanted my ability to perceive all that is to be infinite; another way of putting this is to be self-realized; fully conscious of consciousness.
Most people think they are conscious, but they are actually operating primarily through unconscious tendencies and compulsions set forth from past experiences that have colored their way of perceiving, reacting and behaving. To be fully conscious is not to be a slave of the past but to respond with full awareness in the present moment. People think that our perception is limited but in fact through the practice of meditation our ability to perceive expands and grows infinitely.
This is not to say that we see and perceive everything all at once! It means that when we expand our level of consciousness our energies are not occupied with bodily sensations or mind traffic which opens the space for us to interact in our world in a more conscious and intentional way. Skip to content. Thinking vs. Arno November 19, pm. Difference Between Thinking and Awareness — We tend to equate a powerful mind with being mentally fit, but this is really a misunderstanding of mental fitness.
In fact, our minds will tend to limit us at every turn and drain our power away. Mental fitness is not concerned with the mind, per se, but rather with awareness.
Someone who is mentally fit is aware. Our minds will create doubts—escape thoughts—when we are stressed. In some cases like yes-fall zones we need to develop the ability to push through these doubts.
Doing this expands our mental fitness. To do this we need to operate from a part of us that is different than our thinking mind. That part is awareness. You are aware through what you see, hear, feel, smell, taste. Thinking separates us from the immediacy of the situation. Awareness gives us direct perception of the situation and allows us to perceive it more accurately. Arno 24 Nov Reply. RJ Christensen 24 Nov Reply. Robby 24 Nov Reply. Happy Thanksgiving! Paul Sweatman 25 Nov Reply. EJ 1 Dec Reply.
Arno 2 Dec Reply. Roxana 8 Dec Reply. Roxana 12 Dec Reply. Robby 13 Dec Reply. Dan 3 Mar Reply. Arno 4 Mar Reply. Dan 4 Mar Reply. Anything we decide on is going to be unavailable at the point one would put it into action anyway… Thank you for your question though, it helped me flesh out my thoughts on the subject. Arno 5 Mar Reply. Naz 7 Apr Reply. Vks 29 Jan Reply. Dodge 9 Aug Reply. Thank you very much for the clear explanation.
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