Anderson Katherine M, Stockman Jamila K
Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States.
Department of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States.
JMIR Form Res. 2022 Nov 17;6(11):e35730. doi: 10.2196/35730.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth conversations about effective behavior change models for increasing prevention behavior, ranging from wearing masks in public to physical distancing. Among the considered behavior change techniques is the use of fear appeals, through which a negative possible outcome is emphasized to invoke fear, which in turn may promote prevention behaviors to counter the likelihood of the negative outcome. Although fear is hypothesized as health promoting in some theories of health behavior, little research has rigorously assessed the relationship.
In our exploratory analyses, we aim to examine the association, including directionality of the association between fear of COVID-19 and COVID-19 prevention behaviors across 2 time points during the early COVID-19 pandemic among a sample of US women.
The COPE study, a web-based survey of US women's COVID-19 experiences, was deployed in May-June 2020 (time 1) with follow-up in December 2020-January 2021 (time 2; n=200). Demographic characteristics as well as fear of COVID-19 and COVID-19 prevention behaviors (eg, staying home except for essential activities, physical distancing in public, and masking in public) were measured. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were used to characterize COVID-19 prevention behaviors and fear of COVID-19 among participants. Cross-lagged panel analysis, a type of structural equation modeling that assesses directionality of temporal associations, was used to understand relationships, if any, between variables of interest.
We found cross-sectional associations between fear of COVID-19 and staying home and physical distancing, as well as temporal associations between fear at time 1 and time 2 and prevention behaviors at time 1 and time 2. However, results of the cross-lagged panel analysis indicated no cross-lagged temporal relationships between fear of COVID-19 and COVID-19 prevention behaviors 6 months apart.
Fear of COVID-19 did not appear to predict COVID-19 prevention behaviors 6 months after initial measurements among the sample of women recruited for our study. Future research should rigorously test these associations longitudinally, and alternative methods of public health prevention promotion should be considered.
持续的新冠疫情引发了关于有效行为改变模式的讨论，以增加预防行为，范围从在公共场合戴口罩到保持社交距离。在考虑的行为改变技巧中，有一种是使用恐惧诉求，即强调负面的可能结果以引发恐惧，这反过来可能会促进预防行为以应对负面结果的可能性。尽管在一些健康行为理论中，恐惧被假设为对健康有促进作用，但很少有研究对这种关系进行严格评估。
在我们的探索性分析中，我们旨在研究新冠疫情早期，在美国女性样本中，对新冠的恐惧与新冠预防行为之间的关联，包括关联的方向性，跨越两个时间点进行考察。
COPE研究是一项基于网络的对美国女性新冠经历的调查，于2020年5月至6月（时间1）开展，并于2020年12月至2021年1月进行随访（时间2；n = 200）。测量了人口统计学特征以及对新冠的恐惧和新冠预防行为（例如，除必要活动外呆在家中、在公共场合保持社交距离以及在公共场合戴口罩）。描述性和双变量分析用于描述参与者中的新冠预防行为和对新冠的恐惧。交叉滞后面板分析是一种结构方程模型，用于评估时间关联的方向性，用于理解感兴趣变量之间的关系（如果有的话）。
我们发现对新冠的恐惧与呆在家中和保持社交距离之间存在横断面关联，以及时间1和时间2的恐惧与时间1和时间2的预防行为之间存在时间关联。然而，交叉滞后面板分析的结果表明，相隔6个月的对新冠的恐惧与新冠预防行为之间不存在交叉滞后的时间关系。
在我们研究招募的女性样本中，初次测量6个月后，对新冠的恐惧似乎并未预测新冠预防行为。未来的研究应纵向严格测试这些关联，并应考虑公共卫生预防促进的替代方法。
