Tan Rayner Kay Jin, Lim Jane Mingjie, Neo Pearlyn Hui Min, Ong Suan Ee
University of North Carolina Project-China, Guangzhou, China.
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore and National University Health System, Singapore, Singapore.
JMIR Hum Factors. 2022 Nov 22;9(4):e39312. doi: 10.2196/39312.
Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated global public concern and panic. The glut of information, or "infodemic," has caused concern for authorities due to its negative impacts on COVID-19 prevention and control, spurring calls for a greater scholarly focus on health literacy during the pandemic. Nevertheless, few studies have sought to qualitatively examine how individuals interpreted and assimilated health information at the initial wave of COVID-19 restrictions.
We developed this qualitative study adopting chat-based focus group discussions to investigate how individuals interpreted COVID-19 health information during the first wave of COVID-19 restrictions.
We conducted a qualitative study in Singapore to investigate how individuals perceive and interpret information that they receive on COVID-19. Data were generated through online focus group discussions conducted on the mobile messaging smartphone app WhatsApp. From March 28 to April 13, 2020, we held eight WhatsApp-based focus groups (N=60) with participants stratified by age groups, namely 21-30 years, 31-40 years, 41-50 years, and 51 years and above. Data were thematically analyzed.
A total of four types of COVID-19 health information were generated from the thematic analysis, labeled as formal health information, informal health information, suspicious health information, and fake health information, respectively. How participants interpreted these categories of information depended largely on the perceived trustworthiness of the information source as well as the perceived veracity of information. Both factors were instrumental in determining individuals' perceptions, and their subsequent treatment and assimilation of COVID-19-related information.
Both perceived trustworthiness of the information source and perceived veracity of information were instrumental concepts in determining one's perception, and thus subsequent treatment and assimilation of such information for one's knowledge of COVID-19 or the onward propagation to their social networks. These findings have implications for how policymakers and health authorities communicate with the public and deal with fake health information in the context of COVID-19.
与新冠疫情相关的错误信息加剧了全球公众的担忧和恐慌。信息过剩，即“信息疫情”，因其对新冠疫情防控产生的负面影响而引起当局关注，促使人们呼吁在疫情期间学术界更加关注健康素养。然而，很少有研究试图定性地考察在新冠疫情限制措施实施初期，个人是如何解读和吸收健康信息的。
我们开展了这项定性研究，采用基于聊天的焦点小组讨论，以调查在新冠疫情限制措施实施的第一波期间，个人是如何解读新冠健康信息的。
我们在新加坡进行了一项定性研究，以调查个人如何感知和解读他们收到的关于新冠疫情的信息。数据通过在智能手机应用程序WhatsApp上进行的在线焦点小组讨论生成。2020年3月28日至4月13日，我们举办了8个基于WhatsApp的焦点小组（N = 60），参与者按年龄组分层，即21 - 30岁、31 - 40岁、41 - 50岁和51岁及以上。对数据进行了主题分析。
主题分析共产生了四类新冠健康信息，分别标记为正式健康信息、非正式健康信息、可疑健康信息和虚假健康信息。参与者如何解读这些信息类别在很大程度上取决于信息来源的可信度以及信息的真实性。这两个因素在决定个人的认知以及他们随后对新冠相关信息的处理和吸收方面都起到了作用。
信息来源的可信度和信息的真实性都是决定个人认知的重要概念，进而影响个人对这类信息的处理和吸收，以了解新冠疫情或传播给其社交网络。这些发现对政策制定者和卫生当局在新冠疫情背景下如何与公众沟通以及处理虚假健康信息具有启示意义。
