TY - JOUR
T1 - Accuracy of COVID-19 relevant knowledge among youth
T2 - Number of information sources matters
AU - Hill, Patricia Wonch
AU - Diamond, Judy
AU - Spiegel, Amy N.
AU - VanWormer, Elizabeth
AU - Leadabrand, Meghan
AU - McQuillan, Julia
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by the 2020 National Science Foundation grant, RAPID DRL2028026: Using Popular Media to Educate Youth About the Biology of Viruses and the Current COVID-19 Pandemic (JD, JM, LVW, PWH) (nsf. gov). Parts of this publication were also supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health under award R25GM129836 (JM, PWH) (nihsepa.org). Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Hill et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Can comics effectively convey scientific knowledge about COVID-19 to youth? What types and how many sources of information did youth have about COVID-19 during the pandemic? How are sources of information associated with accurate COVID-19 knowledge? To answer these questions, we surveyed youth in grades 5–9 in a Midwestern United States school district in the winter of 2020–2021. The online survey used measures of COVID-19 knowledge and sources, with an embedded experiment on COVID-19 relevant comics. Guided by an integrated science capital and just-in-time health and science information acquisition model, we also measured level of science capital, science identity, and utility of science for health and society. The school district protocol required parental consent for participation; 264 of ~15,000 youth participated. Youth were randomly assigned one of four comic conditions before receiving an online survey. Results indicate that, similar to knowledge gains in comic studies on other science topics, reading the comics was associated with 7 to 29% higher accuracy about COVID-19. We found that youth reported getting information about COVID-19 from between 0–6 sources including media, family, friends, school, and experts. The bivariate positive association of news versus other sources with accuracy of knowledge did not persist in the full model, yet the positive association of a higher number of sources and accuracy did persist in the multivariate models. The degree of valuing the utility of science for their health moderated the number of sources to accuracy association. Those with less value on science for health had a stronger positive association of number of sources and accuracy in COVID-19 knowledge. We conclude that during a pandemic, even with health and science information ubiquitous in the news media, increasing youth access to a variety of accurate sources of information about science and health can increase youth knowledge.
AB - Can comics effectively convey scientific knowledge about COVID-19 to youth? What types and how many sources of information did youth have about COVID-19 during the pandemic? How are sources of information associated with accurate COVID-19 knowledge? To answer these questions, we surveyed youth in grades 5–9 in a Midwestern United States school district in the winter of 2020–2021. The online survey used measures of COVID-19 knowledge and sources, with an embedded experiment on COVID-19 relevant comics. Guided by an integrated science capital and just-in-time health and science information acquisition model, we also measured level of science capital, science identity, and utility of science for health and society. The school district protocol required parental consent for participation; 264 of ~15,000 youth participated. Youth were randomly assigned one of four comic conditions before receiving an online survey. Results indicate that, similar to knowledge gains in comic studies on other science topics, reading the comics was associated with 7 to 29% higher accuracy about COVID-19. We found that youth reported getting information about COVID-19 from between 0–6 sources including media, family, friends, school, and experts. The bivariate positive association of news versus other sources with accuracy of knowledge did not persist in the full model, yet the positive association of a higher number of sources and accuracy did persist in the multivariate models. The degree of valuing the utility of science for their health moderated the number of sources to accuracy association. Those with less value on science for health had a stronger positive association of number of sources and accuracy in COVID-19 knowledge. We conclude that during a pandemic, even with health and science information ubiquitous in the news media, increasing youth access to a variety of accurate sources of information about science and health can increase youth knowledge.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0267871
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0267871
M3 - Article
C2 - 36574374
AN - SCOPUS:85144636953
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 17
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 12 December
M1 - e0267871
ER -