Who is (not) complying with the U. S. social distancing directive and why? Testing a general framework of compliance with virtual measures of social distancing

  1. Russell H. Fazio
  2. Benjamin C. Ruisch
  3. Courtney A. Moore
  4. Javier A. Granados Samayoa
  5. Shelby T. Boggs
  6. Jesse T. Ladanyi

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Abstract

A study involving over 2000 online participants (US residents) tested a general framework regarding compliance with a directive in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study featured not only a self-report measure of social distancing but also virtual behavior measures—simulations that presented participants with graphical depictions mirroring multiple real-world scenarios and asked them to position themselves in relation to others in the scene. The conceptual framework highlights three essential components of a directive: (1) the source, some entity is advocating for a behavioral change; (2) the surrounding context, the directive is in response to some challenge; and (3) the target, the persons to whom the directive is addressed. Belief systems relevant to each of these three components are predicted, and were found, to relate to compliance with the social distancing directive. The implications of the findings for public service campaigns encouraging people to engage in social distancing are discussed.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.26.20219634: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Measures: Ohio State University’s Institutional Review Board approved all study procedures (IRB: 2020B0129).
    Consent: After providing informed consent, participants completed the behavioral measures of social distancing, followed by questions regarding the pandemic, the test of COVID knowledge, the unique set of predictor variables for the study to which the participant had been randomly assigned, and finally a series of demographic questions.
    RandomizationSubsets of our other predictors were included in four distinct surveys to which participants were randomly assigned.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableA total of 2,004 MTurkers (US residents) participated in the common survey (903 women, 1,084 men, 17 no response; Mage = 38.66, SDage = 12.33), with about 500 being randomly assigned to each sub-study.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

    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 10.1371/journal.pone.0247520
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.26.20219634v1 on medRxiv