Brief Informational Intervention for COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis

NCT ID: NCT04557241

Last Updated: 2021-02-09

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 1017 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2020-01-14
• Study Completion Date: 2021-01-31

Brief Summary

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.

Detailed Description

The investigators propose a single-stage, randomized, superiority trial with 2 parallel groups allocated with a 1:1 ratio. The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.

Subjects will be recruited using the Prolific data collection platform, which is one of two primary online crowdsourced research platforms (the other is Amazon's Mechanical Turk, or mTurk).

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. 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 IP 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. Replacements will be drawn in such a way as to preserve the representativeness of the sample.

Missing data will be addressed using either full information maximum likelihood or Markov Chain Monte Carlo multiple imputation strategies. When there is a violation of missing at random (which is unlikely) in preliminary analyses, the investigators will incorporate strategies representing the missingness. The researchers will further explore data quality in terms of outliers, measurement error, non-normality, and variance heterogeneity. Robust methods of analysis (e.g., Huber-White robust standard errors) will be used, as appropriate. For all multi-item measures, reliability will be evaluated prior to computation of the variable.

Conditions

COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: DOUBLE

Study Groups

Brief Intervention arm

The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process (as described in the Intervention section). This arm will introduce the intervention and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Brief informational infographic

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process. Infographics are preferable to narratives or text because they center visuals as part of the storytelling process and facilitate cognitive information processing, knowledge absorption, and enhanced persuasion. The study's infographic design will follow best practices in health communication. The message will be simple and jargon free. Visuals will include individuals (scientists), charts, text, and numbers. Attention will be paid to images, color, frames, representation, and composition (e.g., how the elements in the infographic are organized to show their relationship to each other).

Placebo Control arm

The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (As described in the Placebo Control section). This arm will introduce the control infographic and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection.

Group Type: PLACEBO_COMPARATOR

Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.

Interventions

Brief informational infographic

The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process. Infographics are preferable to narratives or text because they center visuals as part of the storytelling process and facilitate cognitive information processing, knowledge absorption, and enhanced persuasion. The study's infographic design will follow best practices in health communication. The message will be simple and jargon free. Visuals will include individuals (scientists), charts, text, and numbers. Attention will be paid to images, color, frames, representation, and composition (e.g., how the elements in the infographic are organized to show their relationship to each other).

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)

The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Indiana University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Jon Agley

Associate Professor

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

Digital Intervention (Prolific Study Panel)

Bloomington, Indiana, United States

Countries

United States

References

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

Agley J, Xiao Y. Existence of differential belief profiles of COVID-19 narratives: The role of trust in science. Research Square. 2020;Preprint.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

Herzberg KN, Sheppard SC, Forsyth JP, Crede 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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 22486595 (View on PubMed)

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 32405095 (View on PubMed)

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 32470120 (View on PubMed)

Yildirim M, Guler A. COVID-19 severity, self-efficacy, knowledge, preventive behaviors, and mental health in Turkey. Death Stud. 2022;46(4):979-986. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1793434. Epub 2020 Jul 16.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

PMID: 32673183 (View on PubMed)

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.

Reference Type: BACKGROUND

Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Chen X, Golzarri-Arroyo L. Intervening on Trust in Science to Reduce Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase COVID-19 Preventive Behavioral Intentions: Randomized Controlled Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Oct 14;23(10):e32425. doi: 10.2196/32425.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 34581678 (View on PubMed)

Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Golzarri-Arroyo L. COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis: Protocol for a Randomized Trial of a Brief Informational Intervention. JMIR Res Protoc. 2020 Dec 7;9(12):e24383. doi: 10.2196/24383.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 33175694 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

Indiana_CTSI_Agley_2020

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id