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

COVID-19大流行提供了一个独特的机会，可以在国家和地区范围内审视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，以减轻焦虑并收集有关如何保护自己的信息。虽然这些依赖性是有据可查的，但对媒体依赖性转化为期望行为的程度以及与这些依赖性相关联的其他影响可能帮助或阻碍这种转化的程度知之甚少。特别令人不安的是，先前的研究支持这样一种观点，即抑郁症可能导致不作为，而对不同新闻来源的依赖可能导致风险感知的变化。目前的研究扩展了以前的研究，调查在何种程度上的风险认知和动机采取保护行动是联系在一起的具体来源的喜好，以及在何种程度上个人的处理特点和相关的反应影响这些关系。该研究还旨在调查抑郁症可能导致在这种情况下不作为的论点。此外，研究小组还探讨了在威胁迫在眉睫时的具体保护行动和风险感知，而不是依赖回忆。研究结果有助于我们的知识基础，填补了显着的差距，在社会科学文献的应急反应，通过评估特质处理，源偏好，抑郁症，和保护行动之间的联系。新的知识有利于应急管理人员的信息设计和放置。一项在线调查从全国代表性的5,000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媒体的相对重要性，第一警报的来源，寻求信息所花的时间，风险感知（包括程度和概率），疾病控制中心倡导的特定保护行为，以及抑郁症。问题还测量情绪幸福感，参与收集信息的水平，认知的特质需求和沉思应对倾向。先前的研究结果有关反刍的信息寻求的作用进行了重新检查复制和扩展，以调查随后的作用，这种处理方式在抑郁症和保护行动，如社会距离。源偏好被减少到集群使用探索性因素分析和审查的影响，具体的源偏好集群的风险认知和保护action.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

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.