“…An open question "Please justify why you would be willing to take the risk you chose" was also asked. The instrument was largely based on the international SARS Psychosocial Research Consortium survey [15], with additional questions on risk perceptions: perceived personal and comparative risk of avian influenza, SARS, and infectious diseases in general; perceived risk of flu, other diseases, accidents, and other travel-related hazards; personal and comparative risk taking tendency; issues important in risk taking; perceived efficacy to prevent avian flu, SARS, and infectious diseases in general; and precautionary behaviors while on trip (for the items and the response categories, please see Table 1). Psychological scales included seven subscales of the Illness Attitudes Scales [13,16]: fear of illness (general reliability 0.91) [17], worry about illness (0.92), effects of symptoms (0.93), concern about pain (0.87), fear of disease (0.92), fear of death (0.89), and health habits (0.79); Short-form Anxiety Inventory (0.84) [18]; Life Orientation Test (0.78) [19].…”