Trait Mindful Nonreactivity and Nonjudgment Prospectively Predict of COVID-19 Health Protective Behaviors Across a Two-Month Interval in a USA Sample

  1. William H. O’Brien
  2. Shan Wang
  3. Aniko Viktoria Varga
  4. Chung Xiann Lim
  5. Huanzhen Xu
  6. Somboon Jarukasemthawee
  7. Kullaya Pisitsungkagarn
  8. Piraorn Suvanbenjakule
  9. Abby Braden

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a growing recommendation for social distancing and using personal protective equipment (PPE) to help mitigate the virus transmission. Previous studies have shown promising relationships between perceived susceptibility to COVID-19, mindfulness-related variables, and COVID-19 health protective behaviors (social distancing and PPE use). In this longitudinal study, the variables were measured across a two-month interval during the earlier phase of the pandemic in June (Time 1) and August (Time 2), 2020. The results from 151 matched USA MTurk participants indicated that the perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 did not significantly predict the health protective behaviors. For mindfulness, nonreactivity was positively related to PPE use while nonjudgement was negatively related to PPE use. Accordingly, mindfulness promotion messages could be a way to increase the likelihood of people performing health protective behaviors to better constrain the COVID-19 outbreak.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.21.21260971: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: Participants: This project was approved by the USA university Institutional Review Board on March 30, 2020.
    Consent: All participants provided informed consent.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power AnalysisThis sample size was sufficient for evaluating up to 10 predictors in a regression analyses with adequate power.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are limitations in this study that merit discussion. MTurk workers may have characteristics that differ from other samples of individuals. Chandler and Shapiro (2016) reported that MTurk samples can be more representative of the USA population relative to convenience samples but less representative than probability samples used in epidemiological research. However, Chandler and Shapiro (2016) also pointed out that national probability can be biased because they rely on telephone methods that can over sample older and more conservative participants. There are some strengths to MTurk samples. During the COVID-19 lockdown, online data gathering was the only way to gather complex survey data from diverse populations from broad geographic locations. Additionally, we adopted “best practices” by screening for response quality, using attention checks, and making sure that signaling cues were not in the surveys (Ophir, et al., 2019; Cheung et al., 2017). A total of 450 persons completed the Time 1 survey and 151 (34%) completed the Time 2 survey. The 34% completion rate for this study is consistent with other MTurk research. Auer et al., (2021) conducted a study examining retention levels for MTurk workers across a 30-day interval using a 30-minute survey (which is similar in length to the survey used in this study). With $1.00 compensation for completing each survey (which is equal to our payments), they observed a 35% retention rate. We argue that mindfulness may promote less ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.21.21260971v1 on medRxiv