The Harms and Benefits Inventory (HBI): Development of a Validated Survey-Based Measure to Understand the Impact of Policy on Gun Users

Overview

This study will develop and validate an inventory of questions that measures perceived harms and benefits experienced by gun owners related to public policy as well as explore the relationship between perceived harms and benefits and the presence or absence of firearm policy and firearm behaviors.

Status

Complete

Purpose

This project seeks to produce a publicly accessible, validated assessment instrument designed to measure perceived harms and benefits in a standardized, non-policy specific manner.

Approach

Field a nationally representative survey of approximately 2,000 United States adults, with an oversample of gun owners, to refine and validate the Harms and Benefits Inventory (HBI). We will explore the following questions:

• What is the prevalence of harms and benefits associated with two specific firearm laws?
• Does the prevalence of harms and benefits differ by reason for gun ownership and ownership status?
• What is the ability of the HBIs to predict gun behavior associated with two specific firearm laws?
• What is the correlation between HBI's mean sub-scale values and the presence or absence of public policy?

Significance

Reducing firearm violence through public policy is challenging as behavior change is required primarily by gun owners despite the consequences impacting society. Understanding how a given policy may impact the perceived harms and benefits of gun owners will potentially yield more efficacious public policy solutions to gun violence.

Published Research

• Firearm Injury Hospitalizations and Handgun Purchaser Licensing Laws: Longitudinal Evaluation of State-Level Purchaser Licensure Requirements on Firearm Violence

  View research

• Missouri Citizen Perceptions: Giving Second Amendment Preservation Legislation a Second Look

  View research

Investigator Bio

Mitchell L. Doucette, Ph.D., MS, is an injury epidemiologist and an assistant scientist with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Doucette's research focuses on evaluating the impact of policy on firearm violence. His previous work examined the impact of policy on workplace shootings. He received his PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and his MS from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.