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

基本信息

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

项目摘要

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.

冠状病毒的爆发给我们的卫生系统带来了重大挑战。当人们生病并需要医疗护理时，他们需要医院床位和呼吸机等资源。然而，如果许多人在短时间内生病，这些资源就不足以照顾他们所有人。如果我们要为每个病人提供尽可能最好的医疗护理，我们就需要预防和延迟新的感染。我们从历史和医学中知道，公共行为是这种预防的最重要工具。但要让公众提供帮助，人们需要知道该做什么以及如何做，以及理解为什么这些行为如此重要。人们从周围人那里得到线索来理解新的、不确定的情况。因此，确保每个人都能获得有关 Covid-19 风险以及如何预防的良好信息非常重要。官方信息需要反映科学知识，社区中出现的神话需要得到解决，以便人们能够理解和揭穿它们。该研究小组一直在研究人们如何看待 Covid-19 的风险，以及他们正在采取哪些措施来保护自己和社区。这项工作的一个重要发现是，当人们不确定风险时，他们更有可能依靠其他人正在做的事情来确定正确的做法是什么。研究小组还发现，人们对社交距离的主要担忧是他们担心没有薪水，以及如何获得食物和满足其他紧急需求。该项目涉及调查和实验，以更好地了解这些问题并提供新知识来帮助指导政策行动。首先，我们需要知道帮助人们了解如何预防感染是否真的会引导他们保护自己。这些实验测试并确定了如何最好地帮助人们理解，特别是对于那些没有完全保持社交距离的人。然后，在接下来的几个月里，随着情况的变化，研究团队会制定信息，帮助人们了解正在发生的事情以及他们的行为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确定某些保护行为的报告水平是否较低，并确定依从性差的预测因素。研究表明，对更极端的社会疏远行为的遵守似乎取决于社会规范，当其他人似乎没有采取这种疏远行为时，遵守率就会较低。此外，人们似乎会依赖这些规范，尤其是当他们对风险感到更加不确定时。研究结果还表明，对失去工资和个人计划中断的担忧最能预测预计无法遵守留在家中的命令，其次是需要购买食物和其他紧急需求。这些发现表明，旨在帮助人们渡过财务和后勤困难的政策方法至关重要，并且有可能产生巨大影响。新研究更深入地探讨了这些担忧以及它们与保护行动的关系。第一阶段确定哪些预测因素对保护行为有因果影响。第二阶段是评估保护行为的执行情况，并确定第一阶段针对全国代表性样本（对高风险地理位置进行过采样）确定的因果预测因素。在第三阶段，针对每个因果因素，团队迭代地在试验台环境中开发和试点消息，在全国样本中通过实验设计测试最终消息（随着环境和流行病的发展定期重复），并跟进关键消息的子集，并进行 3 天的重新测试以评估行为变化。最后，团队再次针对每条有效消息迭代地传播推荐消息以及这些消息为何有用以及如何理解它们发挥作用的基本原理。该团队与已建立的公共卫生官员网络分享其研究结果。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。