Explaining science behind COVID-19 guidelines leads to compliance
It was found that the video that gave more detail was the one that led to greater retention within the participants.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: APRIL 23, 2021 23:08A face mask is seen on the street in Jerusalem amid the coronavirus pandemic, on February 2, 2021.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Research led by Stanford University has shown that more information is better than just providing the facts when trying to get a point across to the masses in terms of public health crises, the university said.The researchers studied the participants knowledge of COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines after showing them one of two videos. The first video displayed basic facts about COVID-19 health regulations, while the other gave a more in-depth explanation of the guidelines and concepts behind them.It was found that the video that gave more detail was the one that led to greater retention within the participants.“There’s an idea that shorter and more concise statements are better,” said one of the study authors Prashant Loyalka, who is an associate professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education. “It may seem counterintuitive that a longer intervention would be effective. But we’re seeing that when people understand the underlying scientific reasoning, that’s when it really sinks in.”According to the Stanford report, the researchers began the study in April 2020, at the height of the coronavirus spread.“We noticed that a lot of the information that was being provided both in the United States and around the world was typically very simplistic: Wear a mask, wash your hands, don’t go out,” said lead author of the study Dinsha Mistree, who is a research fellow and lecturer at Stanford Law School. “There wasn’t often a lot of context delivered about why.”The research was aimed at new English speakers, and recruited study participants from low-to-middle-income families in India.“We targeted the interventions to this population, young people who are in a lower socioeconomic strata and just learning English,” said Mistree. “We couldn’t assume they knew much about viruses or biology.” Participants were randomly chosen to watch one of the two videos. The first covered, symptoms of COVID-19 and how to protect against infection. The more in-depth video covered the scientific reasoning behind the health guidelines, such as the biology of the virus, spread the virus with no symptoms and exponential growth of the virus. The control group didn't watch either.The participants were then quizzed on the videos, once directly after watching the video, then again a week later, and a third time two weeks after.Participants who had watched the more in-depth explanation had retained more of the information over time, Stanford said. It is noted that the scientific explanations played a part in retention ability.“Instead of reducing their attention, the longer video actually did increase their understanding,” said Mistree.The researchers hope these findings will be used by government health agencies around the world to disseminate information to the masses.
