Assessing the Effectiveness of Common Health Messaging Tactics on Self-Reported and Validated Vaccine Uptake: A Multi-Method Approach.

本研究确定了地方、州和联邦卫生机构为鼓励疫苗接种而采用的信息传递策略，并严格评估这些努力的成功程度，以便制定和实施一系列疫苗推广沟通的“最佳做法”。与之前的研究相比，该项目提供了三个关键进展，将改善美国的疫苗传播。首先，研究人员在社交媒体上建立了联邦和州公共卫生机构疫苗通信的首个公共数据库。其次，基于从数据库中收集到的见解，研究人员评估了公共卫生机构部署的数百种疫苗宣传信息对美国人对疫苗的态度和行为的影响。第三，可以说是最重要的是，该项目通过开展大规模的在线疫苗宣传活动并评估其对疫苗摄取的影响，大规模地部署了在实验工作中被认为最有希望的信息（这是大多数学术研究中很少采取的步骤）。该项目推进了经同行评审的疫苗推广跨学科工作，并帮助卫生机构通过制定有效疫苗传播的“最佳做法”，更好地鼓励疫苗接种。本项目利用科学传播科学的见解，建立一个多阶段、多方法和多学科的研究议程，旨在严格确定(1)卫生机构过去如何努力鼓励接种三种疫苗（COVID-19、季节性流感和破伤风），以及(2)这些努力取得成功的程度。该研究通过采用研究小组开发的“大数据”内容分析程序来确定过去鼓励联邦和地方卫生机构接种疫苗的努力中存在的主题和信息设计元素，从而实现了第一个目标。然后，该项目通过纳入民意调查的一系列随机对照试验，评估过去疫苗推广工作的有效性；包括(a)一项“试点阶段”联合实验研究，该研究包含在一项纵向调查中，能够评估数百种不同信息传递策略的有效性；(b)一项“验证阶段”析因实验——包含在一项具有全国代表性的横断面研究中——测试在试点阶段确定的最有希望的干预措施的有效性；(c)与市场研究机构合作进行的“实施阶段”现场实验，在搜索引擎平台上实施我们在“验证阶段”确定的最有效的治疗方法。在该研究的实地实验阶段，研究人员评估了疫苗宣传信息对经过验证的疫苗接种数据和个人疫苗接种自我报告的影响，这些数据来自随机选择的一组治疗邮编、治疗县和美国五个州的代表性样本进行的州级意见调查。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research identifies the messaging tactics that local, state, and federal health agencies employ to encourage vaccine uptake, and rigorously evaluate the degree to which those efforts are successful, in order to develop and implement a series of “best practices” for vaccine promotion communication. The project offers three key advancements over previous research that will improve vaccine communication in the United States. First, the researchers build a first-of-its-kind public database of federal and state public health agency vaccine communications on social media. Second, based on insights gleaned from the database, the researchers evaluate the efficacy of hundreds of vaccine promotion messages deployed by public health agencies on Americans’ vaccine attitudes and behaviors. Third, and arguably most importantly, this project deploys the messages deemed most promising in the experimental work at scale (a step rarely taken in most academic research) by conducting a large, online vaccine communication campaign and assessing its impact on vaccine uptake. This project advances peer reviewed interdisciplinary work on vaccine promotion, and helps health agencies better encourage vaccine uptake through the development of “best practices” for effective vaccine communication. This project leverages insights from the science of science communication to build a multi-stage, multi-method, and multidisciplinary research agenda aimed at rigorously identifying (1) how health agencies have made an effort to encourage vaccine uptake for three vaccines (COVID-19, seasonal influenza, and tetanus) in the past, and (2) the degree to which those efforts are successful. The research accomplishes the first objective by employing “big data” content analytic procedures developed by the research team to identify themes and message design elements present in past efforts to encourage vaccine uptake from federal and local health agencies. The project then assesses the effectiveness of past vaccine promotion efforts via a series of randomized controlled trials embedded in public opinion surveys; including (a) a “pilot phase” conjoint experimental study embedded in a longitudinal survey capable of assessing the effectiveness of several hundred different messaging strategies, (b) a “confirmatory phase” factorial experiment – embedded in a nationally representative cross-sectional study – testing the effectiveness of the most promising interventions identified in the pilot phase, and (c) an “implementation phase” field experiment – conducted in partnership with market research agencies – that administers our most effective treatments identified in our “confirmatory phase” on search engine platforms. In the study’s field experimental phase, the researchers evaluate the effect of vaccine promotion messages on both verified vaccine uptake data and individual vaccine uptake self-reports from state-level opinion surveys deployed across a randomly selected set of treatment zip codes, within treated counties, and among a representative sample of five U.S. states.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.