RAPID: How uncertainty about risk and conflicting messages affect preventive behaviors against Covid-19

RAPID：风险的不确定性和相互矛盾的信息如何影响针对 Covid-19 的预防行为

• 批准号: 2027405
• 负责人: Julie Downs
• 金额: $ 19.97万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-01 至 2022-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027405&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; How; uncertainty; about; risk

The coronavirus outbreak poses a major challenge for our health system. As people become sick and need medical care, they need resources like hospital beds and ventilators. However, if many people become sick in a short period of time, there will not be enough of these resources to care for them all. If we are to treat every sick person with the best possible medical care, we need to both prevent and delay new infections. We know from history and medical science that public behavior is the most important tool for this prevention. But for the public to help, people need to know what to do and how to do it, as well as to understand why these behaviors are so important. People take their cues from those around them in making sense of new, uncertain situations. This makes it important to make sure that everybody is getting good information about the risks of Covid-19 and how to prevent it. Official messages need to reflect scientific knowledge, and myths that pop up in communities need to be addressed so that people can understand and debunk them. The research team has been studying how people are thinking about the risks of Covid-19, and what they are doing to protect themselves and their community. One key finding from that work is that when people are uncertain about the risk, they are more likely to rely on what other people are doing to determine what the right thing to do is. The team also finds that people's main concerns about social distancing are that they are worried about getting by without a paycheck and how they will get food and meet other urgent needs. This project involves surveys and experiments to better understand these concerns and provide new knowledge to help guide policy action. First, we need to know whether helping people understand how to prevent infection will actually lead them to protect themselves. The experiments test and identify how best to help people understand, especially for those who are not fully engaging in social distancing. Then, over the next few months as the situation changes, the research team develops messages to help people understand what is happening and how their behavior can help protect themselves and the people around them.In early March 2020, the researchers conducted an exploratory survey to determine whether some protective behaviors were reported at low levels and identify predictors of poor compliance. The research showed that compliance with the more extreme social distancing behaviors appear to be dependent on social norms, with rates being lower when other people do not seem to be engaging in such distancing. Furthermore, people appear to rely on those norms particularly when they experience more uncertainty about the risk. The findings also were that concerns about losing pay and disruption of personal plans are most predictive of anticipated failures to comply with orders to stay home, followed by the need to shop for food and other urgent needs. These findings suggest that a policy approach aimed at getting people through financial and logistical hardship is critically important and has the potential to be highly impactful. The new research explores more deeply these concerns and how they relate to protective actions. The first phase establishes which predictive factors have causal influence on protective behaviors. The second phase is an assessment of how well protective behaviors are being performed and identifies causally predictive factors identified in the first phase for a nationally representative sample (oversampling high-risk geographical locations). In the third phase, iteratively for each causal factor, the team develops and pilots messages in a test-bed environment, testing final messages with an experimental design in a national sample (repeating regularly as the environment and pandemic evolve), and following up on a subset of critical messages with a 3-day retest to assess behavior change. Finally, again iteratively for each effective message, the team disseminates recommended messages along with the rationale for why they are useful and how they are understood to work. The team shares its findings with its established network of public health officials.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

冠状病毒爆发对我们的卫生系统构成了重大挑战。当人们生病并需要医疗服务时，他们需要医院病床和呼吸机等资源。但是，如果许多人在短时间内生病，那么这些资源就不足以照顾他们。如果我们要以最好的医疗服务对待每个病人，我们需要预防和延迟新的感染。从历史和医学科学来看，公共行为是这种预防的最重要工具。但是，要使公众提供帮助，人们需要知道该怎么做以及如何做，并了解为什么这些行为如此重要。人们从周围的人那里汲取了线索，以理解新的不确定情况。这使得确保每个人都能获得有关Covid-19的风险以及如何预防它的良好信息至关重要。官方信息需要反映科学知识，需要解决在社区中弹出的神话，以便人们可以理解和揭穿它们。研究团队一直在研究人们如何思考Covid-19的风险，以及他们为保护自己和社区所做的事情。从这项工作中的一个关键发现是，当人们不确定风险时，他们更有可能依靠别人在做什么来确定正确的事情是。该团队还发现，人们对社会疏远的主要担忧是，他们担心没有薪水，以及如何获得食物并满足其他紧急需求。该项目涉及调查和实验，以更好地理解这些问题并提供新知识以帮助指导政策行动。首先，我们需要知道是否帮助人们了解如何防止感染实际上会导致他们保护自己。实验测试并确定如何最好地帮助人们理解，尤其是对于那些不完全参与社会疏远的人。然后，在接下来的几个月中，随着情况的变化，研究团队会开发信息，以帮助人们了解正在发生的事情以及如何帮助保护自己和周围的人。2020年3月上旬，研究人员进行了一项探索性调查，以确定是否报告了一些保护行为，并确定了依从性差的预测指标。研究表明，遵守更极端的社会疏远行为似乎取决于社会规范，而当其他人似乎没有参与这种疏远时，费率较低。此外，人们似乎依靠这些规范，尤其是当他们对风险的不确定性更加不确定性时。调查结果还表明，对失去薪水和个人计划中断的担忧最可预测预期的失败，以遵守待在家里的命令，然后需要购物食物和其他紧急需求。这些发现表明，旨在使人们度过财务和后勤困难的政策方法至关重要，并且有可能具有很高的影响力。新研究更深入地探讨了这些问题以及它们如何与保护行为相关。第一阶段确定了哪些预测因素对保护行为有因果影响。第二阶段是评估对保护行为的表现良好，并确定了在第一阶段确定的因果预测因素的国家代表性样本（过采样高风险的地理位置）。在第三阶段，对于每个因果因素的迭代，团队在测试床环境中开发和飞行员消息，在国家样本中使用实验设计测试最终消息（随着环境和大流行的演变定期重复），并随后在关键信息的子集中进行了为期3天的重新测试以评估行为改变。最后，对于每个有效的消息，团队再次迭代，将推荐的消息以及理由传播，以了解它们为何有用以及如何理解它们的工作方式。该团队与已建立的公共卫生官员网络分享了其发现。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评论标准来评估的。

项目成果

Psychological predictors of prevention behaviors during the covid-19 pandemic

• DOI: 10.1353/bsp.2020.0014
• 发表时间: 2020-01-01
• 期刊: Behavioral Science Policy
• 作者: Broomell, S B.