Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Apr 30, 2020
Date Accepted: Aug 11, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 27, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Crowdsourcing the Public’s Perception of the Severity and Global Impact of the Novel SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic
ABSTRACT
Background:
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a rapidly developing threat to most people in the United States and abroad. The behaviors of the general public are important to understand, as they may have a tremendous impact on the course of this novel coronavirus pandemic.
Objective:
This study intends to assess the US population's perception and knowledge of the virus as a threat and the behaviors of the general population in response.
Methods:
A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted with random volunteers recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk© (Seattle, WA), an internet crowd-sourcing service, on 3/24/2020.A total of 969 participants met inclusion criteria. It was found that the perceived severity of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly differed between age groups (P < 0.001) and men and women (P < 0.001). A majority of study participants were actively adhering to CDC guidelines.
Results:
A total of 969 participants met inclusion criteria. It was found that the perceived severity of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly differed between age groups (P < 0.001) and men and women (P < 0.001). A majority of study participants were actively adhering to CDC guidelines.
Conclusions:
Though many participants identify COVID-19 as a threat, many failed to place themselves appropriately in the correct categories with respect to risk. This may indicate a need for additional public education in appropriately defining the risk of this novel pandemic.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.