Objective The study aims to investigate public awareness of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and measure levels of anxiety during the outbreak. Method A total of 2115 subjects from 34 provinces in China were evaluated. A questionnaire was designed, which covers demographic characteristics, knowledge of COVID-19, and factors that influenced anxiety during the outbreak to test public awareness and determine the impact of the outbreak on people's lives. In addition, a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) scale was utilized to assess anxiety levels during the outbreak. Lastly, the chi-square test and multiple logistic regression analysis were used to identify factors associated with levels of public anxiety. Results A majority of respondents reported high levels of awareness of COVID-19. A total of 1107 (52.3%), 707 (33.4%), 154 (7.3%), and 147 (7%) respondents exhibited no, mild, moderate, and severe levels of anxiety, respectively. Results of the chi-square test and multiple logistic regression analysis demonstrated that respondents (a) with no college education, (b) are unaware of neighbors who may have been infected, (c) who spent considerable time collecting information and browsing negative information related to the virus, (d) are unhealthy, and (e) displayed low levels of awareness of the transmission routes were highly likely to be anxious. Conclusion During the outbreak, the majority of people exhibited high levels of awareness and knowledge regarding preventive measures from COVID-19. The absence of psychological anxiety was observed in more than half of the respondents. Adaptive responses to anxiety and high levels of awareness about COVID-19 may have protected the public during the outbreak.
Mental health problem among university students is an emerging public health issue, and mental health education has always been the focus of attention for universities. However, limited attention has been paid to the effect of students' acceptance of health messages. Previous studies have found that message framing plays a key role in the process of responding to health-promoting messages. In this backdrop, the study aimed to examine the effects of goal-framed messages on mental health education among medical university students and investigate the moderating role of personal involvement. A cross-sectional study was conducted on medical university students. An online self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Wilcoxon rank-sum test and ordinal logistic regression were used for data analysis. Results showed significant differences in message acceptance between the gain-and loss-framed groups (p < 0.001). Participants with high personal involvement had higher message acceptance than those with low personal involvement in gain-and loss-framed message models (p < 0.05). Specifically, participants who related to roommates with high intimacy had higher message acceptance than those who related to roommates generally (p < 0.05). Participants who were concerned about their health condition had higher message acceptance than those who were neutral about their health condition (p < 0.001). Evidence of advantages of gain-over loss-framed messages on mental health among medical university students was found. The hypothesis that personal involvement with a health issue affects the acceptance of message framing was supported. Public health advocates can use framed message as a strategy to improve the efficacy of intervention in mental health education.
Background Social media is a powerful tool for the dissemination of health messages. However, few studies have focused on the factors that improve the influence of health messages on social media. Objective To explore the influence of goal-framing effects, information organizing, and the use of pictures or videos in health-promoting messages, we conducted a case study of Sina Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. Methods Literature review and expert discussion were used to determine the health themes of childhood obesity, smoking, and cancer. Web crawler technology was employed to capture data on health-promoting messages. We used the number of retweets, comments, and likes to evaluate the influence of a message. Statistical analysis was then conducted after manual coding. Specifically, binary logistic regression was used for the data analyses. Results We crawled 20,799 Sina Weibo messages and selected 389 health-promoting messages for this study. Results indicated that the use of gain-framed messages could improve the influence of messages regarding childhood obesity (P<.001), smoking (P=.03), and cancer (P<.001). Statistical expressions could improve the influence of messages about childhood obesity (P=.02), smoking (P=.002), and cancer (P<.001). However, the use of videos significantly improved the influence of health-promoting messages only for the smoking-related messages (P=.009). Conclusions The findings suggested that gain-framed messages and statistical expressions can be successful strategies to improve the influence of messages. Moreover, appropriate pictures and videos should be added as much as possible when generating health-promoting messages.
A range of intervention models are available for childhood obesity prevention; however, few studies have examined the effectiveness of intervention messages. This study developed childhood simple obesity prevention messages on the basis of goal-framing and temporal-framing effects to improve message acceptance among the caregivers of preschool children and explored associated factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 592 caregivers of preschool children in urban kindergartens in China during March to April 2019. The framing messages were developed based on prospect theory and construal level theory. The majority (48.4%) of caregivers found the gain-framed, present-oriented message most salient for acceptance. We found that gender, education background, theme, and the use of negative words have impacts on goal-framing effects; and previous participation in a health related intervention, career category, and the theme have impacts on temporal-framing effects (p < 0.001). Goal-framing effects and temporal-framing effects can influence each other (p < 0.001). The findings suggest that the gain-framed, present-oriented message could be considered a strategy to improve the acceptance of information by caregivers. When framing a message, subtle differences like using negative words might affect the exertion of framing effects.
BACKGROUND There is a lot of health science information in social media. But most of the information lacks persuasive effect. Text features have a great influence on the information. Therefore, the text features of health science information in social media are studied. OBJECTIVE To investigate the text feature of health science information on social media and suggest ways to develop health science information on the basis of the research conclusions. METHODS Using Web crawler to collect the health science information data from WeChat official account, 4,645 myopia prevention texts of children in WeChat were collected, and 813 valid texts were included in the study. Through the analysis of text features, the text sentiment and the use of statistical evidence of health science information were extracted. RESULTS Results show that the use of commendatory words is obviously more than derogatory words (P < 0.01) and statistical evidence was used in over 96% of the text. Suggestions are put forward for the development of health science information in terms of text sentiment and statistical evidence. CONCLUSIONS This study investigated the emotional features of text and statistical evidence use features of health science information in social media. It is found that health information makers prefer positive emotions and use statistical evidence in most texts. Combined with previous research findings, we recommend greater usage of positive emotions and less of statistical evidence when formulating health information.
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