Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jun 4, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 9, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 8, 2020
Trends and predictors of COVID-19 information sources and their relationship with knowledge and beliefs related to the pandemic: a nationwide cross-sectional study
ABSTRACT
Background:
COVID-19 has emerged as a rapidly evolving global health crisis, leading to a heightened need to understand health information seeking behaviors in order to address disparities in knowledge and beliefs about the crisis.
Objective:
This study assessed socio-demographic predictors of the use and trust of different COVID-19 information sources, and the association between information sources, knowledge and beliefs about the pandemic.
Methods:
An online survey was conducted among U.S. adults in two rounds within March-April 2020 using social-media advertisement-based recruitment. Participants were asked on their use of eleven different COVID-19 information sources, followed by a single question which assessed participants’ most trusted information source. Selection of COVID-related knowledge and belief questions was identified using past empirical literature and salient concerns at the time of survey implementation.
Results:
The sample consists of 11,242 participants. Government websites were used less by 40-59-year-olds (AOR 0.59, 95%CI:0.46-0.74) and those ≥60-years (AOR 0.49, 95%CI:0.37-0.64) compared to 18-38-years-olds. Participants in April were markedly less likely to use (AORuse 0.41, 95%CI:0.35-0.46) and trust government sources (AORtrust 0.51, 95%CI:0.47-0.56). The information source on COVID-19 knowledge was mixed, while many COVID-19 beliefs were significantly predicted by information source.
Conclusions:
Study findings can help inform COVID-19 health communication campaigns and highlight the impact of using a variety of different and trusted information sources.
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.