COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis Clinical Trial
Official title:
Brief Informational Intervention for COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis
Verified date | February 2021 |
Source | Indiana University |
Contact | n/a |
Is FDA regulated | No |
Health authority | |
Study type | Interventional |
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to affect life in the United States, the important role of non-pharmaceutical preventive behaviors (such as wearing a face mask) in reducing harm has become clear. In parallel to the pandemic, researchers have observed an "infodemic" of misinformed or inconsistent narratives about COVID-19. There is growing evidence that misinformed COVID-19 narratives are associated with a wide variety of undesirable behavior (e.g., burning down cell towers). Further, individuals' adherence to recommended COVID-19 preventive guidelines has been inconsistent, and such mandates have engendered opposition and controversy. Recent research suggests the possibility that trust in science and scientists may be an important thread to weave throughout these seemingly disparate components of the modern public health landscape. Thus, this paper describes the protocol for a randomized trial of a brief, digital intervention to increase trust in science. The objective of this trial is to examine if exposure to a curated infographic can increase trust in science, reduce believability of misinformed narratives, and increase likelihood to engage in preventive behaviors.
Status | Completed |
Enrollment | 1017 |
Est. completion date | January 31, 2021 |
Est. primary completion date | January 14, 2021 |
Accepts healthy volunteers | Accepts Healthy Volunteers |
Gender | All |
Age group | 18 Years and older |
Eligibility | Inclusion Criteria: - To be included, participants must be identified by Prolific as part of a nationally-representative sample. Participants will also be required to be age 18 or older, and to reside in the United States. Exclusion Criteria: - Individuals who decline to digitally sign the informed consent document will be excluded and replaced. Per recent best practice recommendations for crowdsourced digital research, attention checks and screens for "bots" and international users with virtual private networks to mimic US internet protocol addresses will be embedded within the instruments, and failure of more than one attention check, or any bot/location check will result in subject exclusion and replacement. |
Country | Name | City | State |
---|---|---|---|
United States | Digital Intervention (Prolific Study Panel) | Bloomington | Indiana |
Lead Sponsor | Collaborator |
---|---|
Indiana University | Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute |
United States,
Agley J, Xiao Y. Existence of differential belief profiles of COVID-19 narratives: The role of trust in science. Research Square. 2020;Preprint.
Agley J. Assessing changes in US public trust in science amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Health. 2020 Jun;183:122-125. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 May 13. — View Citation
Ajzen I. Theory of planned behavior questionnaire. Measurement Instrument Database for Social Science. https://www.midss.org/sites/default/files/tpb.construction.pdf. Published 2013. Accessed July 17, 2020.
Bruine de Bruin W. Age Differences in COVID-19 Risk Perceptions and Mental Health: Evidence From a National U.S. Survey Conducted in March 2020. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Jan 18;76(2):e24-e29. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa074. — View Citation
CDC. How to protect yourself & others. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Published 2020. Accessed July 17, 2020.
Chambon M, Dalege J, Elberse JE, Harreveld Fv. A psychological network approach to factors related to preventive behaviors during pandemics: A European COVID-19 study. PsyArXiv. 2020:https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/es31245v.
Herzberg KN, Sheppard SC, Forsyth JP, Credé M, Earleywine M, Eifert GH. The Believability of Anxious Feelings and Thoughts Questionnaire (BAFT): a psychometric evaluation of cognitive fusion in a nonclinical and highly anxious community sample. Psychol Assess. 2012 Dec;24(4):877-91. doi: 10.1037/a0027782. Epub 2012 Apr 9. — View Citation
Nadelson L, Jorcyk C, Yang D, et al. I just don't trust them: The development and validation of an assessment instrument to measure trust in science and scientists. School Science and Mathematics. 2014;114(2):76-86.
Yildirim M, Güler A. COVID-19 severity, self-efficacy, knowledge, preventive behaviors, and mental health in Turkey. Death Stud. 2020 Jul 16:1-8. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1793434. [Epub ahead of print] — View Citation
Type | Measure | Description | Time frame | Safety issue |
---|---|---|---|---|
Other | Political orientation (covariate 1) | Scale variable (0: Conservative to 10: Liberal) as in our prior work [2, 6] | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | Religious commitment (covariate 2) | Scale variable (0: Low commitment to 10: High commitment) as in our prior work [2, 6] | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | Sociodemographics (covariates 3 through 6) | Race/ethnicity, gender, age, and education level using standardized questions | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | COVID-19 diagnosis (covariates 7 and 8) | Two self report questions. The first asks whether the respondent has been diagnosed with COVID-19, and the second asks more broadly whether the respondent believes they have had COVID-19. Question wording will be per Bruine de Bruin (2020) [7]. | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | Perceived severity of COVID-19 (covariate 9) | Based on the Health Belief Model as used in Yildirima & Gülerc [8]. | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | Self-efficacy to act regarding COVID-19 | Based on the Health Belief Model as used in Yildirima & Gülerc [8]. | Immediately post-intervention | |
Other | Normative beliefs about friends' and family's COVID-19 behaviors | Single item from Chambon et al [9]. | Immediately post-intervention | |
Primary | Change in trust in science | 21-item scale developed by Nadelson et al [1] called the Trust in Science Inventory. It is scored from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates low trust and 5 indicates high trust. | Pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention | |
Primary | Believability profiles | Will be computed using latent profile analysis of believability measures. These measures were developed and first used in our recent study of COVID-19 narratives [2]. Response options for these measures used well-established semantic differential responses for believability of different statements (e.g., as in Herzberg et al.) [3] ranging from [1: Extremely unbelievable] to [7: Extremely believable]. Exact measures used to generate profiles for this study will be available in the published protocol paper (to be submitted). | Immediately post-intervention | |
Primary | Preventive behavioral intentions | A series of six questions based on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended COVID-19 preventive behaviors. [4] Questions will be written according to Azjen's guide to intention questionnaires [5]. | Immediately post-intervention |