Health Lit Res Pract. 2023 Jun;7(2):e105-e110. doi: 10.3928/24748307-20230523-01. Epub 2023 Jun 1.
Inaccurate perceptions of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) risk may decrease compliance with public health mitigation practices, in turn increasing disease burden. The extent to which public perceptions of COVID-19 risk are inaccurate is not well studied. This study investigates the relationship between preferred information sources and inaccurate COVID-19 risk perception. A cross-sectional online survey of adults in the United States using online snowball techniques was administered between April 9, 2020 and July 12, 2020. Raking techniques were used to generate a representative U.S. sample from 10,650 respondents. Respondents who did not provide an answer to key questions were excluded. The remaining sample included 1,785 health care workers (HCW) and 4,843 non-HCW. Subjective risk was measured as the product of perceived likelihood of COVID-19 infection and perceived harm from infection. Objective risk was measured as a function of the presence of known COVID-19 risk factors. Discrepancies between subjective and objective risk were compared between respondents with different preferred information sources. Chi Square contingency tables and pair-wise correlation were used to evaluate differences to 95% confidence. For HCW and non-HCW, the greatest overestimation of personal COVID-19 risk assessment ( < .05 for all differences) were found in those whose preferred source of information was social media (HCW: 62.1%; non-HCW: 64.5%), followed by internet news sources (HCW: 59.6%, non-HCW%: 59.1%), government websites (HCW: 54%, non-H = 51.8%), other sources (HCW: 50.7%, non-H = 51.4%), and television news (HCW: 46.1%, non-HCW: 47.6%). Preferred information sources correlate with inaccuracies in personal COVID-19 risk assessment. Public health information campaigns should consider targeting groups whose preferred information sources correlate to higher inaccuracies in COVID-19 risk perceptions. [].
不准确的 COVID-19(冠状病毒病 2019)风险认知可能会降低公众对公共卫生缓解措施的遵守程度,从而增加疾病负担。公众对 COVID-19 风险的认知不准确的程度尚未得到充分研究。本研究旨在调查公众对 COVID-19 风险的认知与首选信息来源之间的关系。本研究于 2020 年 4 月 9 日至 2020 年 7 月 12 日期间,采用在线滚雪球技术对美国成年人进行了一项横断面在线调查。使用耙取技术从 10650 名受访者中生成具有代表性的美国样本。对未回答关键问题的受访者进行了排除。剩余样本包括 1785 名医护人员(HCW)和 4843 名非医护人员。主观风险的衡量标准为感知到的 COVID-19 感染可能性与感染造成的危害的乘积。客观风险的衡量标准是已知 COVID-19 风险因素的存在。将不同首选信息来源的受访者的主观风险和客观风险之间的差异进行比较。使用卡方检验和两两相关分析来评估 95%置信区间的差异。对于 HCW 和非 HCW,对个人 COVID-19 风险评估的过度高估(所有差异均<0.05)最大的是那些首选信息来源是社交媒体的人(HCW:62.1%;非 HCW:64.5%),其次是互联网新闻来源(HCW:59.6%,非 HCW:59.1%),政府网站(HCW:54%,非 H = 51.8%),其他来源(HCW:50.7%,非 H = 51.4%)和电视新闻(HCW:46.1%,非 HCW:47.6%)。首选信息来源与个人 COVID-19 风险评估的不准确程度相关。公共卫生信息宣传活动应考虑针对那些首选信息来源与 COVID-19 风险认知不准确程度相关的群体。