Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 6, 2020
Date Accepted: Oct 8, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 13, 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Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Associations of COVID-19 misinformation exposure and belief with COVID-19 knowledge and preventive behaviours: A population-based study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online misinformation proliferation in the COVID-19 pandemic has become a major public health concern.
Objective:
We aimed to assess associated factors including psychological distress with received misinformation, and the associations between COVID-19 knowledge and number of prevention behaviours while believing in COVID-19 misinformation.
Methods:
A population-based cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 1049 South Korean adults in April 2020. Respondents were asked about receiving COVID-19 misinformation using 12 items identified from the World Health Organization and local news. Logistic regression was used to compute adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for the association of misinformation receipt with socio-demographic characteristics, source of information, COVID-19 misinformation belief and psychological distress, and the associations of COVID-19 misinformation belief with COVID-19 knowledge and the number of COVID-19 preventive behaviours among those who received the misinformation. All data were weighted according to the Korea census data in 2018.
Results:
67.78% respondents received COVID-19 misinformation, which was negatively associated with older age (60-69 years: aOR=0.40, 95% CI 0.25-0.64 vs. 20-29 years) and higher monthly income (KRW3,000,000-4,990,000: 0.66, 0.47-0.93 vs. below KRW3,000,000), and positively associated with higher education (1.42, 1.02-1.96 vs. high school or below). Misinformation receipt was associated with social networking services (1.67, 1.20-2.32), instant messaging (1.79, 1.27-2.51), anxiety (2.13, 1.62-2.79), depressive (1.73, 1.28-2.34), post-traumatic stress disorder (1.97, 1.42-2.73) symptoms and misinformation belief (7.33, 5.17-10.38). Misinformation belief was associated with lower knowledge (Medium: 0.50, 0.27-0.93; High: 0.31, 0.16-0.58), and fewer preventive behaviours (5-8 behaviours: 0.43, 0.27-0.68; ≥ 9 behaviours: 0.42, 0.26-0.68) towards COVID-19.
Conclusions:
COVID-19 misinformation receipt was associated with misinformation belief, while misinformation belief was associated with fewer preventive behaviours. Given the potential of undermining global efforts in COVID-19 disease control, public health strategies are required to counter proliferation of misinformation.
Citation
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