Trial reportJMIR public health and surveillance2021
Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study.
Trial report in JMIR public health and surveillance, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social Media as an Effective Provider of Quality-Assured and Accurate Information to Increase Vaccine Rates: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Pooled it
- Distrust, trauma, doubt, and protective reactions to coronavirus disease 2019: cautionary tales and lessons to learn for future pandemics: a case report.Journal of medical case reports · 2025Article
- Inclusive Crisis Communication in a Pandemic Context: A Rapid Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Review
- Considering the Subjective Well-Being of Israeli Jews during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Messaging Insights from Religiosity and Spirituality as Coping Mechanisms.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Say Yes! COVID Test: A Health Communication Campaign to Encourage Use of Rapid, At-Home Antigen Testing in Underserved and Historically Marginalized Communities.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPublic health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash.
objectiveThis study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals' identities increases their compliance.
methodsWe conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs: one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words.
resultsWe recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual's identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points.
conclusionsUsing social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals' identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines.
trial registrationISRCTN Registry 22331899; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.