RAPID: Examining Media Dependencies, Risk Perceptions, and Depressive Symptomatology during the 2020 COVID Pandemic

新冠肺炎大流行提供了一个独特的机会，可以在国家和区域范围内检查风险认知和应对措施。当面临重大健康危机时，个人可能会有动力寻求信息，以缓解焦虑，并收集有关如何保护自己的信息。虽然这些依赖关系被很好地记录下来，但关于媒体依赖关系在多大程度上转化为所需的行为，以及与这些依赖关系相关联的其他影响可能在多大程度上帮助或阻碍这种转换，我们知之甚少。尤其令人不安的是，先前的研究支持这样一种观点，即抑郁症状可能导致无所作为，依赖不同的新闻来源可能导致对风险的感知不同。目前的研究通过调查风险感知和采取保护行动的动机与特定来源偏好的联系程度，以及个体加工特征和相关反应对这些关系的影响程度，对先前的研究进行了扩展。这项研究还旨在调查抑郁症状可能导致在这种情况下无所作为的论点。此外，研究小组探索了在威胁迫在眉睫时的具体保护行动和对风险的感知，而不是依赖召回。这些发现通过评估特质处理、来源偏好、抑郁症状和保护行动之间的联系，填补了社会科学文献中关于紧急反应的显著空白，从而为我们的知识库做出了贡献。这一新知识有助于应急管理者设计和发布信息。一项在线调查从具有全国代表性的5000名受访者样本中收集数据，以评估感兴趣的关键变量。参与者被问及不同新闻机构的相对重要性、第一次警报的来源、寻找信息所花费的时间、风险感知(包括规模和概率)、疾病控制中心倡导的特定保护行为以及抑郁症状。问题还测量情绪幸福感、对收集到的信息的参与程度、对认知的特质需求以及沉思的应对倾向。先前关于沉思在信息寻求中的作用的研究结果被重新检验以进行重复，并扩展到调查这种处理方式在抑郁症状和保护性行为中的后续作用，例如社交距离。使用探索性因素分析将来源偏好归类，并根据特定来源偏好集群对风险感知和保护行动的影响进行检查。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine risk perceptions and responses on both a national and regional scale. When faced with a major health crisis, individuals are likely to be motivated to seek information in order to alleviate anxiety and gather information about how to protect themselves. While these dependencies are well documented, less is known about the extent to which media dependency translates into desired behavior, and the extent to which other effects associated with these dependencies may help or hinder this translation. Particularly troubling is prior research supporting the notion that depressive symptomology may lead to inaction, and that reliance on different news sources may lead to variability in the perception of risk. The current study extends previous research by investigating the extent to which risk perception and motivation to take protective action are tied to specific source preferences, and the degree to which individual processing characteristics and related responses influence these relationships. The research also aims to investigate the argument that depressive symptomatology may lead to inaction under such circumstances. Further, the research team explores specific protective actions and perceptions of risk while the threat is imminent, as opposed to relying on recall. The findings contribute to our knowledge base by filling a significant gap in the social science literature on emergency response by evaluating the links between trait processing, source preferences, depressive symptomatology, and protective actions. The new knowledge is beneficial to emergency managers for message design and placement.An online survey gathers data from a nationally representative sample of 5,000 respondents to assess the key variables of interest. Participants are asked about the relative importance of varying news outlets, sources of first alerts, time spent seeking information, risk perception (including magnitude and probability), specific protective behaviors advocated by the Center for Disease Control, and depressive symptomatology. Questions also measure emotional well-being, level of involvement in the information gathered, trait need for cognition, and ruminative coping tendencies. Prior findings concerning the role of rumination in information seeking are reexamined for replication and extended to investigate the subsequent role of this processing style in both depressive symptomatology and protective actions, such as social distancing. Source preferences are reduced into clusters using Exploratory Factor Analysis and examined in terms of the impact of specific source preference clusters on risk perception and protective action.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.