COVID19 Behavioral ProphylaxisNCT04557241
Brief Informational Intervention for COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis
A study testing Brief informational infographic in people with COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis, run by Indiana University at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to affect life in the United States, the important role of non-pharmaceutical preventive behaviors (such as wearing a face mask) in reducing harm has become clear. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 18 years and olderHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis
- What is being tested?
- Brief informational infographic
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- Yes, some participants may receive a placebo
- How many people
- 1,017 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 14 Jan 2020to 31 Jan 2021
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- None posted in the registry
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 18 years and older
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- To be included, participants must be identified by Prolific as part of a nationally-representative sample. Participants will also be required to be age 18 or older, and to reside in the United States.
Who cannot join
- Individuals who decline to digitally sign the informed consent document will be excluded and replaced. Per recent best practice recommendations for crowdsourced digital research, attention checks and screens for "bots" and international users with virtual private networks to mimic US internet protocol addresses will be embedded within the instruments, and failure of more than one attention check, or any bot/location check will result in subject exclusion and replacement.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country.
United States1 site
Digital Intervention (Prolific Study Panel)
Bloomington, Indiana, 47404
About this study
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to affect life in the United States, the important role of non-pharmaceutical preventive behaviors (such as wearing a face mask) in reducing harm has become clear. In parallel to the pandemic, researchers have observed an "infodemic" of misinformed or inconsistent narratives about COVID-19. There is growing evidence that misinformed COVID-19 narratives are associated with a wide variety of undesirable behavior (e.g., burning down cell towers). Further, individuals' adherence to recommended COVID-19 preventive guidelines has been inconsistent, and such mandates have engendered opposition and controversy. Recent research suggests the possibility that trust in science and scientists may be an important thread to weave throughout these seemingly disparate components of the modern public health landscape. Thus, this paper describes the protocol for a randomized trial of a brief, digital intervention to increase trust in science.
The objective of this trial is to examine if exposure to a curated infographic can increase trust in science, reduce believability of misinformed narratives, and increase likelihood to engage in preventive behaviors.
Read the detailed description
The investigators propose a single-stage, randomized, superiority trial with 2 parallel groups allocated with a 1:1 ratio. The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.
Subjects will be recruited using the Prolific data collection platform, which is one of two primary online crowdsourced research platforms (the other is Amazon's Mechanical Turk, or mTurk).
To be included, participants must be identified by Prolific as part of a nationally-representative sample. Participants will also be required to be age 18 or older, and to reside in the United States. Individuals who decline to digitally sign the informed consent document will be excluded and replaced. Per recent best practice recommendations for crowdsourced digital research, attention checks and screens for "bots" and international users with virtual private networks to mimic US IP addresses will be embedded within the instruments, and failure of more than one attention check, or any bot/location check will result in subject exclusion and replacement. Replacements will be drawn in such a way as to preserve the representativeness of the sample.
Missing data will be addressed using either full information maximum likelihood or Markov Chain Monte Carlo multiple imputation strategies. When there is a violation of missing at random (which is unlikely) in preliminary analyses, the investigators will incorporate strategies representing the missingness. The researchers will further explore data quality in terms of outliers, measurement error, non-normality, and variance heterogeneity. Robust methods of analysis (e.g., Huber-White robust standard errors) will be used, as appropriate. For all multi-item measures, reliability will be evaluated prior to computation of the variable.
- Conditions
- COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis
- Being tested
- Brief informational infographic, Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)
- Keywords
- misinformation, trust, prevention
- Medical subject headings
- Communication
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Brief informational infographicBehavioural
The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process. Infographics are preferable to narratives or text because they center visuals as part of the storytelling process and facilitate cognitive information processing, knowledge absorption, and enhanced persuasion. The study's infographic design will follow best practices in health communication. The message will be simple and jargon free. Visuals will include individuals (scientists), charts, text, and numbers. Attention will be paid to images, color, frames, representation, and composition (e.g., how the elements in the infographic are organized to show their relationship to each other).
Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)Behavioural
The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Brief Intervention arm | Experimental | The primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process (as described in the Intervention section). This arm will introduce the intervention and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection. Receives: Behavioral: Brief informational infographic |
| Placebo Control arm | Placebo comparator | The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (As described in the Placebo Control section). This arm will introduce the control infographic and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection. Receives: Behavioral: Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic) |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Change in trust in science
21-item scale developed by Nadelson et al [1] called the Trust in Science Inventory. It is scored from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates low trust and 5 indicates high trust.
Measured: Pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention
Believability profiles
Will be computed using latent profile analysis of believability measures. These measures were developed and first used in our recent study of COVID-19 narratives [2]. Response options for these measures used well-established semantic differential responses for believability of different statements (e.g., as in Herzberg et al.) [3] ranging from [1: Extremely unbelievable] to [7: Extremely believable]. Exact measures used to generate profiles for this study will be available in the published protocol paper (to be submitted).
Measured: Immediately post-intervention
Preventive behavioral intentions
A series of six questions based on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended COVID-19 preventive behaviors. [4] Questions will be written according to Azjen's guide to intention questionnaires [5].
Measured: Immediately post-intervention
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted21 Sep 2020
- Study start14 Jan 2020
- Primary completion14 Jan 2021
- Study completion31 Jan 2021
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (11)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for COVID19 Behavioral ProphylaxisStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Prevention
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Double blind
- Who is masked
- Participant, Outcomes assessor
- Enrolment
- 1,017 participants (actual)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Indiana University
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute
- Responsible party
- Principal investigator, Jon Agley, Indiana University
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT04557241
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- Indiana_CTSI_Agley_2020
- Status last verified
- Feb 2021
- First submitted
- 16 Sep 2020
- Last updated
- 9 Feb 2021
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: Fully de-identified data (full dataset) will be made available along with the publication of the primary results paper from this study.
Publications
Nadelson L, Jorcyk C, Yang D, et al. I just don't trust them: The development and validation of an assessment instrument to measure trust in science and scientists. School Science and Mathematics. 2014;114(2):76-86.
Agley J, Xiao Y. Existence of differential belief profiles of COVID-19 narratives: The role of trust in science. Research Square. 2020;Preprint.
Herzberg KN, Sheppard SC, Forsyth JP, Crede M, Earleywine M, Eifert GH. The Believability of Anxious Feelings and Thoughts Questionnaire (BAFT): a psychometric evaluation of cognitive fusion in a nonclinical and highly anxious community sample. Psychol Assess. 2012 Dec;24(4):877-91. doi: 10.1037/a0027782. Epub 2012 Apr 9.
PubMed 22486595CDC. How to protect yourself & others. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Published 2020. Accessed July 17, 2020.
Ajzen I. Theory of planned behavior questionnaire. Measurement Instrument Database for Social Science. https://www.midss.org/sites/default/files/tpb.construction.pdf. Published 2013. Accessed July 17, 2020.
Agley J. Assessing changes in US public trust in science amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Health. 2020 Jun;183:122-125. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 May 13.
PubMed 32405095Bruine de Bruin W. Age Differences in COVID-19 Risk Perceptions and Mental Health: Evidence From a National U.S. Survey Conducted in March 2020. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Jan 18;76(2):e24-e29. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa074.
PubMed 32470120Yildirim M, Guler A. COVID-19 severity, self-efficacy, knowledge, preventive behaviors, and mental health in Turkey. Death Stud. 2022;46(4):979-986. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1793434. Epub 2020 Jul 16.
PubMed 32673183Chambon M, Dalege J, Elberse JE, Harreveld Fv. A psychological network approach to factors related to preventive behaviors during pandemics: A European COVID-19 study. PsyArXiv. 2020:https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/es31245v.
Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Chen X, Golzarri-Arroyo L. Intervening on Trust in Science to Reduce Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase COVID-19 Preventive Behavioral Intentions: Randomized Controlled Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Oct 14;23(10):e32425. doi: 10.2196/32425.
PubMed 34581678Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Golzarri-Arroyo L. COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis: Protocol for a Randomized Trial of a Brief Informational Intervention. JMIR Res Protoc. 2020 Dec 7;9(12):e24383. doi: 10.2196/24383.
PubMed 33175694
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 9 Feb 2021. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Brief Informational Intervention for COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT04557241
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- Indiana_CTSI_Agley_2020
- Conditions
- COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis
- Keywords
- misinformation, trust, prevention
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Completed
- Enrolment
- 1,017 participants (actual)
- Lead sponsor
- Indiana UniversityUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute
- Study start
- 14 Jan 2020 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 14 Jan 2021 (actual)
- Study completion
- 31 Jan 2021 (actual)
- First posted
- 21 Sep 2020 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has continued to affect life in the United States, the important role of non-pharmaceutical preventive behaviors (such as wearing a face mask) in reducing harm has become clear. In parallel to the pandemic, researchers have observed an "infodemic" of misinformed or inconsistent narratives about COVID-19. There is growing evidence that misinformed COVID-19 narratives are associated with a wide variety of undesirable behavior (e.g., burning down cell towers). Further, individuals' adherence to recommended COVID-19 preventive guidelines has been inconsistent, and such mandates have engendered opposition and controversy. Recent research suggests the possibility that trust in science and scientists may be an important thread to weave throughout these seemingly disparate components of the modern public health landscape. Thus, this paper describes the protocol for a randomized trial of a brief, digital intervention to increase trust in science.
The objective of this trial is to examine if exposure to a curated infographic can increase trust in science, reduce believability of misinformed narratives, and increase likelihood to engage in preventive behaviors.
Detailed description
The investigators propose a single-stage, randomized, superiority trial with 2 parallel groups allocated with a 1:1 ratio. The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style.
Subjects will be recruited using the Prolific data collection platform, which is one of two primary online crowdsourced research platforms (the other is Amazon's Mechanical Turk, or mTurk).
To be included, participants must be identified by Prolific as part of a nationally-representative sample. Participants will also be required to be age 18 or older, and to reside in the United States. Individuals who decline to digitally sign the informed consent document will be excluded and replaced. Per recent best practice recommendations for crowdsourced digital research, attention checks and screens for "bots" and international users with virtual private networks to mimic US IP addresses will be embedded within the instruments, and failure of more than one attention check, or any bot/location check will result in subject exclusion and replacement. Replacements will be drawn in such a way as to preserve the representativeness of the sample.
Missing data will be addressed using either full information maximum likelihood or Markov Chain Monte Carlo multiple imputation strategies. When there is a violation of missing at random (which is unlikely) in preliminary analyses, the investigators will incorporate strategies representing the missingness. The researchers will further explore data quality in terms of outliers, measurement error, non-normality, and variance heterogeneity. Robust methods of analysis (e.g., Huber-White robust standard errors) will be used, as appropriate. For all multi-item measures, reliability will be evaluated prior to computation of the variable.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Prevention
- Allocation
- Randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- Double blind (participant, outcomes assessor)
- Number of arms
- 2
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Brief Intervention arm | Experimental | Behavioral: Brief informational infographicThe primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process (as described in the Intervention section). This arm will introduce the intervention and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection. |
| Placebo Control arm | Placebo comparator | Behavioral: Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (As described in the Placebo Control section). This arm will introduce the control infographic and then instruct the participant to review it carefully (including a mandated pause on the infographic screen) before continuing to the remaining data collection. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 18 years and older
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (1 listed)
- To be included, participants must be identified by Prolific as part of a nationally-representative sample. Participants will also be required to be age 18 or older, and to reside in the United States.
Key exclusion criteria (1 listed)
- Individuals who decline to digitally sign the informed consent document will be excluded and replaced. Per recent best practice recommendations for crowdsourced digital research, attention checks and screens for "bots" and international users with virtual private networks to mimic US internet protocol addresses will be embedded within the instruments, and failure of more than one attention check, or any bot/location check will result in subject exclusion and replacement.
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Brief informational infographicThe primary intervention in this study will be an infographic that is designed to build trust in the scientific process. Infographics are preferable to narratives or text because they center visuals as part of the storytelling process and facilitate cognitive information processing, knowledge absorption, and enhanced persuasion. The study's infographic design will follow best practices in health communication. The message will be simple and jargon free. Visuals will include individuals (scientists), charts, text, and numbers. Attention will be paid to images, color, frames, representation, and composition (e.g., how the elements in the infographic are organized to show their relationship to each other). | Behavioural | Brief Intervention arm |
| Placebo control (non-behavioral infographic)The comparator in this study will be a control ("placebo") infographic that is completely unrelated to science (e.g., about cats), but that is developed using the same communication and graphical style. | Behavioural | Placebo Control arm |
Primary outcome
Change in trust in science
Time frame: Pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention
21-item scale developed by Nadelson et al [1] called the Trust in Science Inventory. It is scored from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates low trust and 5 indicates high trust.
Believability profiles
Time frame: Immediately post-intervention
Will be computed using latent profile analysis of believability measures. These measures were developed and first used in our recent study of COVID-19 narratives [2]. Response options for these measures used well-established semantic differential responses for believability of different statements (e.g., as in Herzberg et al.) [3] ranging from [1: Extremely unbelievable] to [7: Extremely believable]. Exact measures used to generate profiles for this study will be available in the published protocol paper (to be submitted).
Preventive behavioral intentions
Time frame: Immediately post-intervention
A series of six questions based on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended COVID-19 preventive behaviors. [4] Questions will be written according to Azjen's guide to intention questionnaires [5].
Results and safety
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 9 Feb 2021.
- BackgroundNadelson L, Jorcyk C, Yang D, et al. I just don't trust them: The development and validation of an assessment instrument to measure trust in science and scientists. School Science and Mathematics. 2014;114(2):76-86.
- BackgroundAgley J, Xiao Y. Existence of differential belief profiles of COVID-19 narratives: The role of trust in science. Research Square. 2020;Preprint.
- Background: PubMed 22486595Herzberg KN, Sheppard SC, Forsyth JP, Crede M, Earleywine M, Eifert GH. The Believability of Anxious Feelings and Thoughts Questionnaire (BAFT): a psychometric evaluation of cognitive fusion in a nonclinical and highly anxious community sample. Psychol Assess. 2012 Dec;24(4):877-91. doi: 10.1037/a0027782. Epub 2012 Apr 9.
- BackgroundCDC. How to protect yourself & others. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html. Published 2020. Accessed July 17, 2020.
- BackgroundAjzen I. Theory of planned behavior questionnaire. Measurement Instrument Database for Social Science. https://www.midss.org/sites/default/files/tpb.construction.pdf. Published 2013. Accessed July 17, 2020.
- Background: PubMed 32405095Agley J. Assessing changes in US public trust in science amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Public Health. 2020 Jun;183:122-125. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 May 13.
- Background: PubMed 32470120Bruine de Bruin W. Age Differences in COVID-19 Risk Perceptions and Mental Health: Evidence From a National U.S. Survey Conducted in March 2020. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2021 Jan 18;76(2):e24-e29. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbaa074.
- Background: PubMed 32673183Yildirim M, Guler A. COVID-19 severity, self-efficacy, knowledge, preventive behaviors, and mental health in Turkey. Death Stud. 2022;46(4):979-986. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2020.1793434. Epub 2020 Jul 16.
- BackgroundChambon M, Dalege J, Elberse JE, Harreveld Fv. A psychological network approach to factors related to preventive behaviors during pandemics: A European COVID-19 study. PsyArXiv. 2020:https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/es31245v.
- Derived from this study: PubMed 34581678Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Chen X, Golzarri-Arroyo L. Intervening on Trust in Science to Reduce Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase COVID-19 Preventive Behavioral Intentions: Randomized Controlled Trial. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Oct 14;23(10):e32425. doi: 10.2196/32425.
- Derived from this study: PubMed 33175694Agley J, Xiao Y, Thompson EE, Golzarri-Arroyo L. COVID-19 Misinformation Prophylaxis: Protocol for a Randomized Trial of a Brief Informational Intervention. JMIR Res Protoc. 2020 Dec 7;9(12):e24383. doi: 10.2196/24383.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: Yes. Fully de-identified data (full dataset) will be made available along with the publication of the primary results paper from this study.
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part. This study is not recruiting at the moment.
The record lists no contact. Use the official record to reach the sponsor.
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Brief informational infographic in people with COVID19 Behavioral Prophylaxis, run by Indiana University at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 1 inclusion and 1 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: finished, as of the sponsor's last update on 9 Feb 2021. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. Some participants in this study may receive a placebo. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
The study is completed, but results are not available in the source record. That does not mean the treatment did or did not work.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
The record lists no contact. The official record names the sponsor, who can be asked directly. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Change in trust in science (time frame: Pre-intervention and immediately post-intervention). The study lists 3 primary outcomes in all. It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT04557241, which also lists 11 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 9 Feb 2021.