Perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 infection from event attendance: results from Louisiana, USA, two weeks preceding the national emergency declaration

  1. Ran Li
  2. Bingcheng Yang
  3. Jerrod Penn
  4. Bailey Houghtaling
  5. Juan Chen
  6. Witoon Prinyawiwatkul
  7. Brian E. Roe
  8. Danyi Qi

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Abstract

Background

Individual perceptions of personal and national threats posed by COVID-19 shaped initial response to the pandemic. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in residents’ awareness about COVID-19 and to characterize those who were more aware and responsive during the early stages of the pandemic in Louisiana.

Methods

In response to the mounting threat of COVID-19, we added questions to an ongoing food preference study held at Louisiana State University from March 3rd through March 12th, 2020. We asked how likely it was that the spread of the coronavirus will cause a national public health crisis and participants’ level of concern about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events. We used regression and classification tree analysis to identify correlations between these responses and (a) national and local COVID case counts; (b) personal characteristics and (c) randomly assigned information treatments provided as part of the food preference study.

Results

We found participants expressed a higher likelihood of an impending national crisis as the number of national and local confirmed cases increased. However, concerns about contracting COVID-19 by attending campus events rose more slowly in response to the increasing national and local confirmed case count. By the end of this study on March 12th, 2020 although 89% of participants agreed that COVID-19 would likely cause a public health crisis, only 65% of the participants expressed concerns about contracting COVID-19 from event attendance. These participants were significantly more likely to be younger students, in the highest income group, and to have participated in the study by responding to same-day, in-person flyer distribution.

Conclusions

These results provide initial insights about the perceptions of the COVID-19 public health crisis during its early stages in Louisiana. We concluded with suggestions for universities and similar institutions as in-person activities resume in the absence of widespread vaccination.

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  1. Version published to 10.1186/s12889-020-10035-6
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049742: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: After providing informed consent, participants moved to isolated, individual kiosks with a computer to answer an online survey in which information treatments were randomly assigned and subjects chose among a series of competing lunch options.
    IRB: Ethics Statement: This study was approved by the Louisiana State University AgCenter and Ohio State University Institutional Review Boards.
    RandomizationAfter providing informed consent, participants moved to isolated, individual kiosks with a computer to answer an online survey in which information treatments were randomly assigned and subjects chose among a series of competing lunch options.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    This lack of insight into the National, not Local group is likely due to the post-hoc nature of the analysis, one of several study limitations. Specifically, the study was originally designed to investigate a topic other than COVID-19 perceptions, hence logical experimental treatments and additional questions about personal perceptions and behaviors relevant to understanding and predicting the spread of COVID-19 were not included and the questions that were posed were not motivated by theory. Another study limitation is that the sample is drawn from a single academic institution, limiting the representativeness of the data geographically, demographically, and socioeconomically. Finally, the data were acquired prior to the declaration of a national emergency, and we would expect further evolution in how people in this location might respond to these questions in the face of more dire national promulgations concerning the pandemic.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.01.20049742v1 on medRxiv