Is the Phone Mightier than the Virus? Cell Phone Access and Epidemic Containment Efforts

Gonzalez, Robert; Maffioli, Elisa M.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3548926

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The CATI survey was performed by 18 enumerators, five of whom were female and who had received training in human subject research and a training for mobile phone data collection. In addition to respondent and household socio‐demographics, the survey tool collected data on the following: (i) political outcomes, such as self‐reported level of trust in governmental and non‐governmental institutions and people, perceived corruption of similar institutions and past voting behaviour; and (ii) Ebola‐related questions, such as self‐reported Ebola incidence in the community, the level of information received, the experience with the response and perceptions about the government's performance (see Maffioli, 2020; Gonzalez & Maffioli, 2020, for the use of the survey sample for other research).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collecting Data During an Epidemic: A Novel Mobile Phone Research Method

Maffioli

2020

J of Intl Development

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study developed a data collection method, combining (i) random‐digit dialling and interactive voice response to sample and screen respondents and (ii) computer‐assisted telephone interviewing, to survey 2265 respondents during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. The response, cooperation, refusal and contact rates computed according to the American Association for Public Opinion Research were 51.97, 52.62, 41.85 and 98.77 per cent, for interactive voice response and 91.10, 91.65, 8.30 and 99.40 per cent for computer‐assisted telephone interviewing. A comparison with Demographic and Health Surveys confirmed that the sample is not nationally representative. However, this method offers promise for data collection at a low cost ($24) and without any in‐person interaction. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collecting Data During an Epidemic: A Novel Mobile Phone Research Method

Maffioli

2020

J of Intl Development

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We used this measure of signal strength, defined between -50 and -140 decibel-milliwatts (dBm), to create a dichotomous variable of cell phone coverage. Details on the model and its output are in [41].…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Are socio-demographic and economic characteristics good predictors of misinformation during an epidemic?

Maffioli

Gonzalez

2022

PLOS Glob Public Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We combine data on beliefs about the origin of the 2014 Ebola outbreak with two supervised machine learning methods to predict who is more likely to be misinformed. Contrary to popular beliefs, we uncover that, socio-demographic and economic indicators play a minor role in predicting those who are misinformed: misinformed individuals are not any poorer, older, less educated, more economically distressed, more rural, or ethnically different than individuals who are informed. However, they are more likely to report high levels of distrust, especially towards governmental institutions. By distinguishing between types of beliefs, distrust in the central government is the primary predictor of individuals assigning a political origin to the epidemic, while Muslim religion is the most important predictor of whether the individual assigns a supernatural origin. Instead, educational level has a markedly higher importance for ethnic beliefs. Taken together, the results highlight that government trust might play the most important role in reducing misinformation during epidemics.

show abstract

“…As submarine cables giving access to broadband connectivity are fairly recent in sub-Saharan Africa, very few studies regarding the impact of high-speed internet on health outcomes have been conducted in this region. Most of the available studies on LMICs focus on cell phone access only and do not address the specific effect of broadband internet, such as Gonzalez & Maffioli (2020) who studied the impact of mobile phone access on the spread of Ebola during the 2014 epidemic in Liberia. Their results pointed to a reduction in the likelihood of Ebola cases in villages with access to mobile phone coverage.…”

Section: * * *mentioning

confidence: 99%