Misinformation on COVID-19 origin and its relationship with perception and knowledge about social distancing: A cross-sectional study

  1. Lenisse M. Reyes
  2. Lilibeth Ortiz
  3. Maxwell Abedi
  4. Yenifel Luciano
  5. Wilma Ramos
  6. Pablo J. de Js. Reyes

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Abstract

Despite the vast scientific evidence obtained from the genomic sequencing of COVID-19, controversy regarding its origin has been created in the mass media. This could potentially have a long-term influence on the behavior among individuals, such as failure to comply with proposed social distancing measures, leading to a consequent rise in the morbidity and mortality rates from COVID-19 infection. Several studies have collected information about knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID-19; however, very little is known about the relationship of the perceptions of the individuals regarding the origin of the virus with the knowledge and perception about social distancing. This study aimed at ascertaining this relationship. For such purpose, a web-based cross-sectional study was conducted among a sample population from five provinces of the Dominican Republic from June to July of 2020. The data collection instrument exploited in the study was a self-designed questionnaire distributed throughout different social media platforms. A purposive sampling strategy was implemented and a total of 1195 respondents completed the questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS. Descriptive statistics, stepwise multiple linear regression, and one-way multivariate analysis were implemented to test the hypotheses. The level of education was significantly associated ( P = .017) with individuals’ perception about the origin of COVID-19, whilst only age ( P = .032) and education level ( P < .001) statistically significantly predicted ‘knowledge about social distancing’. Perception of COVID-19 origin was statistically significant associated ( P = < .001) with the measures of the dependent variables (knowledge and perception on social distancing). The present study has established a possible link between the ‘perception of COVID-19 origin’ and ‘the perception and knowledge about social distancing’.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0248160
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.06.20207894: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis: Collected data from SurveyMonkey™ was exported into an excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel 365®, 2016) for data cleaning, and the dataset was analyzed using SPSS software (IBM SPSS® version 21).
    Microsoft Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Study limitations: A web-based approach was adopted for the purposes of collecting data from the participants. Hence the data collection was made through varied social media platforms which is relatively less utilized among the aged and persons with low socioeconomic background. This approach albeit regarded as an effective and innovative considering the current pandemic situation [49] may introduce a high level of biasness among the group of selected participants for the study. For instance, among the Dominican Republic populace, the average profile of social media users comprises young people from urban areas with a relatively high socioeconomic status compared to the average in other countries of the region [38,39]. Further, about 32.5% of the overall Dominican population do not have access to the internet [50]. This directly implies, this group of the population will be unfairly ruled out automatically. Similar drawbacks have been elaborated by previous researchers [49,51]. Furthermore, another limitation was the difficulty in finding current information about the total population of the country and the national income per capita in public databases; however, for this purpose, data available from the national office of statistics and the central bank of the Dominican Republic [52,53] was used to obtain the most accurate estimation of these values. Nevertheless, a self-administered online questionnaire is not only an effective and innovative tool at the forefront of the cu...

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.06.20207894v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.06.20207894v1 on medRxiv