scholarly journals Effects of Augmented Self-Reflections on Health Perceptions During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Between-Subjects Web-Based Experiment (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayanna Seals ◽  
Monsurat Olaosebikan ◽  
Jennifer Otiono ◽  
Orit Shaer ◽  
Oded Nov

BACKGROUND Augmented Reality (A.R.) technologies with the potential for augmenting mirror and video self-reflections are growing in popularity. It is important to study how the use of these tools may impact human perception and emotion as it relates to health behavior. OBJECTIVE We aimed to examine the impact of mirror self-focus attention and vicarious reinforcement on psychological predictors of behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, our study included measures of fear and message minimization to assess potential adverse reactions to the design interventions. METHODS A web-based between-subjects experiment (n = 335) was conducted to compare the health perceptions of participants in different design conditions. Those who experienced mirror self-focus, vicarious reinforcement, or a combination of the two were compared to a control condition. RESULTS We found that participants who engaged in mirror self-focus, when combined with vicarious reinforcement displayed directly on the user, resulted in elevated scores of perceived threat severity (P = 0.03) and susceptibility (P = 0.01) when compared to the control. A significant indirect effect of direct mirror reinforcement on intention was found with perceived threat severity as a mediator (b = .06, 95% CI= [.02, .12], SE = .02). Direct mirror reinforcement did not result in higher levels of fear (P = 0.32) or message minimization (P = 0.42) when compared to the control. CONCLUSIONS Augmenting reflections with vicarious reinforcement may be an effective strategy for health communication designers. While our study’s results did not show adverse effects in regards to fear and message minimization, utilization of augmenting reflections should be done with care due to possible adverse effects of heightened levels of fear as a health communication strategy.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayanna Seals ◽  
Orit Shaer ◽  
Oded Nov

BACKGROUND Self-focused augmented reality (AR) technologies layer one’s self-reflection with digital content. This design feature is growing in popularity through applications such as Instagram and TikTok, presenting an opportunity to explore perceptual and behavioral implications that may have practical application in health communication and behavior change. OBJECTIVE While previous literature suggests an impact of self-focused AR on increased negative emotions towards a health threat, perceived threat severity and susceptibility, and mitigative behavioral intentions, we aimed to examine the impact of self-focus AR on causal attributions during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS A between-subjects web-based experiment was conducted to compare the causal attribution and vaccine intentions of participants in self-focused AR and non-self-focused conditions. RESULTS A total of 432 participants were included in the analysis. We found that experiencing a vaccine informational animation as self-focus AR predicted higher scores of participants' internal causal attributions towards the risk of contracting the virus (B = -1.10, SE = .43, 95% CI[-1.94,-.27], β = -.30, P = .01). However, self-focused AR effects on vaccination intentions were not significant. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that self-focused AR may be an effective strategy for health communications aiming to increase personal causal attributions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adi V Gundlapalli ◽  
Susan E Beekmann ◽  
Donald R Graham ◽  
Philip M Polgreen ◽  

Abstract Background In 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required drug manufacturers to give advance notice of impending drug shortages. A survey of infectious diseases (ID) physicians was undertaken to determine the impact of this requirement and to follow-up on prior perceptions of ID physicians on shortages of antimicrobial agents. Methods We used a web-based survey of ID physician members of the Emerging Infections Network in 2016. Results Of the 701 of 1597 members (44%) who responded, 70% reported the need to modify their antimicrobial choice because of a shortage in the prior 2 years. A majority (73%) reported the shortages affected patient care or outcomes by the use of broader-spectrum (75%), more costly (58%), less effective second-line (45%), or more toxic agents (37%). The most commonly reported antimicrobials in short supply were piperacillin-tazobactam, ampicillin-sulbactam, meropenem, cefotaxime, and cefepime. Respondents learned of shortages from hospital notification, from a colleague, contact from pharmacy after ordering the agent in short supply, or FDA or other website. The antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) of a majority (83%) of respondents’ institutions had developed approaches to deal with shortages. Although 71% indicated that communications were sufficient, most (87%) did not perceive any improvement in communications about shortages since the 2012 FDA requirement. Conclusions The persistence of antimicrobial agent shortages reported by ID physicians is disturbing as is the resulting need to use broader-spectrum or more toxic agents. The prominent role of ASPs in helping to deal with shortages, effective communication channels, and the lack of perceived improvement in FDA’s communication strategy merit further consideration.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Krawczyk ◽  
T. Chelkowski ◽  
S. Mishra ◽  
D. Xifara ◽  
B. Gibert ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundNon-pharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing have been the primary measures to effectively combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Such measures are highly effective when there is strong population wide adherence which needs to be facilitated by information on the current risks posed by the pandemic alongside a clear exposition of the rules and guidelines in place. Here we address the issue of communication on the pandemic by offering data and analysis of online news media coverage of COVID-19.MethodsWe collected 26 million news articles from the front pages of 172 major online news sources in 11 countries (available at http://sciride.org). Using topic detection we identified COVID-19-related content to quantify the proportion of total coverage pandemic received in 2020. Sentiment analysis tool Vader was employed to stratify the emotional polarity of COVID-19 reporting. Further topic detection and sentiment analysis was performed on COVID-19 articles to reveal the leading themes in pandemic reporting and their respective emotional polarizations.FindingsWe find that COVID-19 coverage accounted for approximately 25% of all front-page online news articles between January and October 2020. Sentiment analysis of English-speaking sources reveals that the overall COVID-19 coverage cannot be simply classified as negative due to the disease subject matter, suggesting a wide heterogeneous reporting of the pandemic. Within this heterogenous coverage, 16% of COVID-19 news articles (or 4% of all English-speaking articles) can be classified as highly negatively polarized, citing issues such as death, fear or crisis.InterpretationThe goal of pandemic public health communication is to increase understanding of distancing rules and maximize the impact of any governmental policy. Our results suggest an information overload in COVID-19 reporting that could risk obscuring effective policy communication. We hope that our data and analysis will inform health communication strategy to minimize the risks of COVID-19 while vaccination regimes are being introduced.


2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klea Faniko ◽  
Till Burckhardt ◽  
Oriane Sarrasin ◽  
Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi ◽  
Siri Øyslebø Sørensen ◽  
...  

Abstract. Two studies carried out among Albanian public-sector employees examined the impact of different types of affirmative action policies (AAPs) on (counter)stereotypical perceptions of women in decision-making positions. Study 1 (N = 178) revealed that participants – especially women – perceived women in decision-making positions as more masculine (i.e., agentic) than feminine (i.e., communal). Study 2 (N = 239) showed that different types of AA had different effects on the attribution of gender stereotypes to AAP beneficiaries: Women benefiting from a quota policy were perceived as being more communal than agentic, while those benefiting from weak preferential treatment were perceived as being more agentic than communal. Furthermore, we examined how the belief that AAPs threaten men’s access to decision-making positions influenced the attribution of these traits to AAP beneficiaries. The results showed that men who reported high levels of perceived threat, as compared to men who reported low levels of perceived threat, attributed more communal than agentic traits to the beneficiaries of quotas. These findings suggest that AAPs may have created a backlash against its beneficiaries by emphasizing gender-stereotypical or counterstereotypical traits. Thus, the framing of AAPs, for instance, as a matter of enhancing organizational performance, in the process of policy making and implementation, may be a crucial tool to countering potential backlash.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (04) ◽  
pp. 294-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutz S. Freudenberg ◽  
Ulf Dittmer ◽  
Ken Herrmann

Abstract Introduction Preparations of health systems to accommodate large number of severely ill COVID-19 patients in March/April 2020 has a significant impact on nuclear medicine departments. Materials and Methods A web-based questionnaire was designed to differentiate the impact of the pandemic on inpatient and outpatient nuclear medicine operations and on public versus private health systems, respectively. Questions were addressing the following issues: impact on nuclear medicine diagnostics and therapy, use of recommendations, personal protective equipment, and organizational adaptations. The survey was available for 6 days and closed on April 20, 2020. Results 113 complete responses were recorded. Nearly all participants (97 %) report a decline of nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures. The mean reduction in the last three weeks for PET/CT, scintigraphies of bone, myocardium, lung thyroid, sentinel lymph-node are –14.4 %, –47.2 %, –47.5 %, –40.7 %, –58.4 %, and –25.2 % respectively. Furthermore, 76 % of the participants report a reduction in therapies especially for benign thyroid disease (-41.8 %) and radiosynoviorthesis (–53.8 %) while tumor therapies remained mainly stable. 48 % of the participants report a shortage of personal protective equipment. Conclusions Nuclear medicine services are notably reduced 3 weeks after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic reached Germany, Austria and Switzerland on a large scale. We must be aware that the current crisis will also have a significant economic impact on the healthcare system. As the survey cannot adapt to daily dynamic changes in priorities, it serves as a first snapshot requiring follow-up studies and comparisons with other countries and regions.


Author(s):  
V. Kovpak ◽  
N. Trotsenko

<div><p><em>The article analyzes the peculiarities of the format of native advertising in the media space, its pragmatic potential (in particular, on the example of native content in the social network Facebook by the brand of the journalism department of ZNU), highlights the types and trends of native advertising. The following research methods were used to achieve the purpose of intelligence: descriptive (content content, including various examples), comparative (content presentation options) and typological (types, trends of native advertising, in particular, cross-media as an opportunity to submit content in different formats (video, audio, photos, text, infographics, etc.)), content analysis method using Internet services (using Popsters service). And the native code for analytics was the page of the journalism department of Zaporizhzhya National University on the social network Facebook. After all, the brand of the journalism department of Zaporozhye National University in 2019 celebrates its 15th anniversary. The brand vector is its value component and professional training with balanced distribution of theoretical and practical blocks (seven practices), student-centered (democratic interaction and high-level teacher-student dialogue) and integration into Ukrainian and world educational process (participation in grant programs).</em></p></div><p><em>And advertising on social networks is also a kind of native content, which does not appear in special blocks, and is organically inscribed on one page or another and unobtrusively offers, just remembering the product as if «to the word». Popsters service functionality, which evaluates an account (or linked accounts of one person) for 35 parameters, but the main three areas: reach or influence, or how many users evaluate, comment on the recording; true reach – the number of people affected; network score – an assessment of the audience’s response to the impact, or how far the network information diverges (how many share information on this page).</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> nativeness, native advertising, branded content, special project, communication strategy.</em></p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-49
Author(s):  
Nur Azizah ◽  
Dedeh Supriyanti ◽  
Siti Fairuz Aminah Mustapha ◽  
Holly Yang

In a company, the process of income and expense of money must have a profit-generating goal base. The success of financial management within the company, can be monitored from the ability of the financial management in managing the finances and utilize all the opportunities that exist with as much as possible with the aim to control the company's cash (cash flow) and the impact of generating profits in accordance with expectations. With a web-based online accounting system version 2.0, companies can be given the ease to manage money in and out of the company's cash. It has a user friendly system with navigation that makes it easy for the financial management to use it. Starting from the creation of a company's cash account used as a cash account and corporate bank account on the system, deletion or filing of cash accounts, up to the transfer invoice creation feature, receive and send money. Thus, this system is very effective and efficient in the management of income and corporate cash disbursements.   Keywords:​Accounting Online System, Financial Management, Cash and Bank


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kopasker

Existing research has consistently shown that perceptions of the potential economic consequences of Scottish independence are vital to levels of support for constitutional change. This paper attempts to investigate the mechanism by which expectations of the economic consequences of independence are formed. A hypothesised causal micro-level mechanism is tested that relates constitutional preferences to the existing skill investments of the individual. Evidence is presented that larger skill investments are associated with a greater likelihood of perceiving economic threats from independence. Additionally, greater perceived threat results in lower support for independence. The impact of uncertainty on both positive and negative economic expectations is also examined. While uncertainty has little effect on negative expectations, it significantly reduces the likelihood of those with positive expectations supporting independence. Overall, it appears that a general economy-wide threat is most significant, and it is conjectured that this stems a lack of information on macroeconomic governance credentials.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Eni Susilawati

The research objective is to analyze the impact of the participation of online  ICT teacher training to increase the number of accessibility the learning content of features in Rumah Belajar. This research used the quantitative research approach with descriptive quantitative analysis methods to be able to describe how the increase in accessibility features of Rumah Belajar and utilization in learning in school. Samples were selected in this study are all online training participants at 15 locations online training that has been conducted by Pustekkom in 2015 and 2016 in 2015. The data was collected using a questionnaire and a list of open questions in accordance with the purpose of research. The results showed that 1) online ICT teacher training participants, after completing the Pustekkom  training online  using become more motivated to access other feature in Rumah Belajar; 2) The order of the percentage of the intensity level of accessibility to the other features of Rumah Belajar are: Sumber Belajar 23%, BSE 23%, Bank Soal 21%, Kelas Maya 13%, Lab Maya 6%, Karya Guru 4%, Wahana Jelajah Angkasa 4%, Peta Budaya 4% and Karya Komunitas 2%, and ICT training online using the application PKB Rumah Belajar can be used as a reference for efforts to develop a web-based learning applications, in particular for the development of Rumah belajar portal belongs Pustekkom Kemendikbud. Tujuan penelitian yaitu untuk menganalisis dampak keikutsertaan diklat online  TIK guru Belajar terhadap peningkatan jumlah aksebilitas konten pembelajaran pada fitur-fitur rumah belajar. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan penelitian kuantitatif dengan metode analisis kuantitatif secara deskriptif untuk bisa menggambarkan bagaimana peningkatan aksesbilitas fitur-fitur rumah belajar dan pemanfaatannya dalam pembelajaran di sekolah. Sampel yang dipilih dalam penelitian ini adalah semua peserta diklat online  pada 15 lokasi diklat online yang telah dilaksanakan oleh Pustekkom pada tahun 2015 dan 2016. Pengumpulan data menggunakan kuesioner dan daftar pertanyaan terbuka sesuai dengan tujuan penelitian. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa 1) peserta diklat online TIK Guru, setelah mengikuti diklat online Pustekkom, menjadi lebih termotivasi untuk mengakses fitur-fitur lainnya dalam Rumah Belajar; 2) Urutan prosentase tingkat intensitas aksesbilitas terhadap fitur-fitur Rumbel selain Pengembangan Keprofesian berkelanjutan (PKB) adalah: Sumber Belajar 23%, Buku Sekolah Elektronik (BSE) 23%, Bank Soal 21%, Kelas Maya 13%, Lab Maya 6%, Karya Guru 4%, Wahana Jelajah Angkasa 4%, Peta Budaya 4% dan Karya Komunitas 2%; dan 3) diklat online TIK menggunakan aplikasi PKB. Rumah belajar bisa dijadikan referensi bagi upaya pengembangan aplikasi pembelajaran berbasis web, khususnya bagi pengembangan portal Rumah Belajar milik Pustekkom Kemendikbud.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document