Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 21, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: May 21, 2021 - Jul 16, 2021
Date Accepted: Jun 19, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 13, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Predictors of COVID-19 Preventive Perceptions and Behaviors: Two Cross-Sectional Studies of Millennials
ABSTRACT
Background:
COVID-19 preventive perceptions and behaviors, especially among U.S. Millennials, are an important means by which the pandemic can be slowed and negative health outcomes can be averted.
Objective:
This manuscript aims to advance knowledge on COVID-19 preventive perceptions and behaviors and their main predictors, including digital health information seeking behavior (HISB), political party identification, and COVID-19 testing status.
Methods:
Two cross-sectional online surveys of U.S. Millennials were conducted from April 10-14, 2020 (N=274) and April 27-May 7, 2020 (N=1,037). Regression analyses predicted five dependent variables (i.e., preventive behaviors and perceptions of severity, susceptibility, self-efficacy, and response efficacy), with independent variables including digital HISB for self, digital HISB for another person, political party identification, and COVID-19 testing status.
Results:
Millennials reported lower levels of perceived susceptibility than the other three preventive perceptions (i.e., severity, self-efficacy, response efficacy), as well as fairly high levels of preventive behaviors. Unlike HISB for another person, digital HISB for self was positively associated with the preventive perceptions and behaviors. Respondents who reported being more Republican tended to have lower levels of preventive perceptions, but not lower levels of preventive behaviors. COVID-19 testing status had only two significant effects on the preventive perceptions and behaviors.
Conclusions:
As the largest and most digitally-savvy generation, Millennials saw COVID-19 as a severe threat, but one that they were less susceptible to. For the Millennial generation, which grew up with the Internet, digital HISB is critical to the development of preventive perceptions and behaviors. These findings have implications for theory, policy, and practical intervention.
Citation
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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.