Health risk appraisals (HRAs) may be useful in the classroom. Potential benefits include: increasing awareness of potential risk, decreasing feelings of overestimated risks, providing feedback, obtaining group data, and increasing motivation to make positive behavior changes. The HRA process involves three components: administering questionnaires to gather personal information, making risk estimations based on questionnaire data, and providing feedback. Before using an HRA in class, the teacher must consider the course's learning objective to see if the HRA is appropriate. HRAs should be used in conjunction with an ongoing comprehensive school health education curriculum. If the HRA is appropriate, the teacher must explain the purpose and procedure for its administration to the students, discussing how the results will be used. The HRA has limitations. For example, its feedback is not a diagnosis of disease, and its information is not a predictor of an individual's medical future (but rather an estimate of risk or exposure to a certain disease or condition). The feedback generated may serve as a starting point for counseling. The use of HRA instruments may provide a good jump start to lessons on risk reduction. In review, before using HRAs in class, teachers must determine lesson objectives, examine whether the HRA would help address the objectives, and decide whether they are comfortable administering the instrument and discussing feedback. (Contains 8 references.) (SM)