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.
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.
Behavioral: 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).
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.
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.
Digital Intervention (Prolific Study Panel)
Bloomington, Indiana, United States