Facemask Wearing and Social Distancing: A Test of Risk Compensation Theory

Author(s):  
Myriam Oliver

Studies suggest facemask wearing and social distancing are convenient ways to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, people might feel an unwarranted sense of safety when engaging in these COVID-prevention behaviors, as predicted by risk compensation theory. Our field research evaluated whether risk compensation influences facemask wearing and social distancing. The evidence-based theory of risk homeostasis presumes individuals will take more risks when they feel more protected. Therefore, someone wearing a facemask should feel safer and subsequently stand closer to others. Research students tested this theory by observing facemask wearing and social distancing in various locations. These students recorded three different observations in a Qualtrics survey: 1) an individual’s gender, 2) mask-wearing behavior (wearing a facemask, wearing a facemask incorrectly, or not wearing a facemask), and 3) the estimated distance between the individual and the nearest person within a six-foot radius. Our field observations of 2,068 individuals revealed that people wearing a facemask maintained greater social/interpersonal distances than did people not wearing a facemask or wearing a facemask incorrectly. This finding supports response generalization or a positive spillover effect rather than risk compensation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 7056-7063
Author(s):  
Vineel P ◽  
Gopala Krishna Alaparthi ◽  
Kalyana Chakravarthy Bairapareddy ◽  
Sampath Kumar Amaravadi

  Evidence-based Practice is defined as usage of current best evidence which is conscientious, explicit and judicious in deciding on the care of the individual. It is one of the vital decision-making processes in the medical profession. Though India is renowned as a center for medical education, there is scarcity regarding the literature on evidence-based practice. The survey aims to identify the prevalence of evidence-based practice among the physical therapists of Mangalore. The study protocol submitted to scientific research committee and Ethical institutional committee, K.M.C. Mangalore Manipal University. On approval, the questionnaire had been distributed among the physical therapists of Mangalore through mails and in the written form. The questionnaire consists of questions divided into eight sections: 1) consent form 2) current practice status; 3) demographic data; 4) behavior; 5) previous knowledge of E.B.P. resources; 6) skills and available resources; 7) Opinions regarding E.B.P.; 8)Perceived barriers regarding E.B.P. The emails were sent through Google forms to all the physical therapists, and hard copies were distributed among the selected physical therapists. The response rate for the emails was 13.1%. The response collected through hard copies was 178, whereas total hard copies distributed was 320, the participants rejected some due to lack of interest. In total, including emails and hard copy questionnaire 205 was the response rate in which all were practicing physical therapy as their primary profession. The findings of the study will pave the way to identify the status of evidence-based practice as well as help in designing promotional programmers for evidence-based practice.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Ayres ◽  
Alessandro Romano ◽  
Chiara Sotis

BACKGROUND Due to network effects, Contact Tracing Apps (CTAs) are only effective if many people download them. However, the response to CTAs has been tepid. For example, in France less than 2 million people (roughly 3% of the population) downloaded the CTA. Consequently, CTAs need to be fundamentally rethought to increase their effectiveness. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to show that CTAs can still play a key role in containing the pandemic, provided that they take into account insights from behavioral sciences. Moreover, we study whether emphasizing the virtues of CTA to induce people to download them makes app users engage in more risky behaviors (risk compensation theory) and whether feedback on a user’s behavior affects future behaviors. METHODS We perform a double-blind online experiment (n=1500) divided in two phases. In Phase I respondents are randomly assigned to one of three different groups: Pros of the app, Pros and Cons of the app and Control I. Respondents in the Pros group were shown information on the advantages of CTAs. Participants in the Pros and Cons group were shown information on both the advantages and the problems that characterize CTAs. Last, respondents in the Control I group were not given any information on CTAs. All participants are then asked how worried they are about the pandemic, how likely they are to download the app, and on how they intend to behave (e.g. attend small and large gathering, wear a mask, etc.). A week later we carried out Phase II. Participants in Phase II were randomly assigned to different in-app notifications in which they were informed on how much risk they were taking compared to the average user. We then ask participants their intentions for future behaviors to investigate whether these notifications were effective in making respondents more prudent. RESULTS All 1500 participants completed phase I of the experiment, whereas 1303 (86.9%) completed also phase 2. The main findings are: i) informing people on the pros of the app make them less worried about the pandemic (p=.004), ii) informing people about both the pros and the cons of the app makes them more likely to download the app (p=.07); iii) carefully devised in-app notification induce people to state that they will: attend less large gatherings (p= .05) and less small gatherings (p= .001), see less people at risk (p=.004), that they stay more at home (p=.006) and wear more often the mask (p=.09). We do not find support for the risk-compensation theory. CONCLUSIONS we suggest that CTAs should be re-framed as Behavioral Feedback Apps (BFAs). The main function of BFAs would be providing users with information on how to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19, e.g. to provide information on how crowded a store is likely to be at a given time of the day. Moreover, the BFA could have a rating system that allows users to flag stores that do not respect safety norms, such as mandating customers to wear a mask or not respecting social distancing. These functions can inform the behavior of app users, thus playing a key role in containing the spread of the virus even if a small percentage of people download the BFA. While effective contact tracing is impossible when only 3% of the population downloads the app, less risk taking by small portions of the population can produce large benefits. BFAs can be programmed so that users can also activate a tracing function akin to the one currently carried out by CTAs. Making contact tracing an ancillary, opt-in function might facilitate a wider acceptance of BFAs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 158-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Garrett

Advancing evidence-based policy change is a leadership challenge that nurses should embrace. Key tips to ensure that evidence-based policy changes are successful at the individual, community, and population levels are offered to help nurses through the change process. The public trust in the nursing profession is a leverage point that should be used to advance the use of evidence, expedite change, and improve health for students and across communities.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Goddard ◽  
Randolph R Myers

Actuarial risk/needs assessments exert a formidable influence over the policy and practice of youth offender intervention. Risk-prediction instruments and the programming they inspire are thought not only to link scholarship to practice, but are deemed evidence-based. However, risk-based assessments and programs display a number of troubling characteristics: they reduce the lived experience of racialized inequality into an elevated risk score; they prioritize a very limited set of hyper-individualistic interventions, at the expense of others; and they privilege narrow individual-level outcomes as proof of overall success. As currently practiced, actuarial youth justice replicates earlier interventions that ask young people to navigate structural causes of crime at the individual level, while laundering various racialized inequalities at the root of violence and criminalization. This iteration of actuarial youth justice is not inevitable, and we discuss alternatives to actuarial youth justice as currently practiced.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo Chowell ◽  
Sushma Dahal ◽  
Raquel Bono ◽  
Kenji Mizumoto

AbstractTo ensure the safe operation of schools, workplaces, nursing homes, and other businesses during COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective public health strategies. Here we focus on the cruise industry which was hit early by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 40 cruise ships reporting COVID-19 infections. We apply mathematical modeling to assess the impact of testing strategies together with social distancing protocols on the spread of the novel coronavirus during ocean cruises using an individual-level stochastic model of the transmission dynamics of COVID-19. We model the contact network, the potential importation of cases arising during shore excursions, the temporal course of infectivity at the individual level, the effects of social distancing strategies, different testing scenarios characterized by the test’s sensitivity profile, and testing frequency. Our findings indicate that PCR testing at embarkation and daily testing of all individuals aboard, together with increased social distancing and other public health measures, should allow for rapid detection and isolation of COVID-19 infections and dramatically reducing the probability of onboard COVID-19 community spread. In contrast, relying only on PCR testing at embarkation would not be sufficient to avert outbreaks, even when implementing substantial levels of social distancing measures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Jan Macfarlane

This is the ninth article in a series that explores the meaning of positive psychology and the importance it has on the wellbeing of the mental health workforce. It will focus on positive psychology interventions that help to develop resilience and to consider how the uplifting effect of resilience through contemporary use in the field of mental health nursing can be experienced. This article will explain what the term resilience means and how it is embedded in the practice of positive psychological interventions. Finally, it will emphasise how the application of positive psychological interventions can benefit the individual and the organisation. The practical tasks provided in the boxes throughout the article will help the reader identify what resilience means for them and understand how to further develop its transferability through evidence-based, user-friendly exercises.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Rocha Dias ◽  
Geraldo Bezerra da Silva Junior

ABSTRACT Objective To analyze, from the examination of decisions issued by Brazilian courts, how Evidence-Based Medicine was applied and if it led to well-founded decisions, searching the best scientific knowledge. Methods The decisions made by the Federal Courts were searched, with no time limits, at the website of the Federal Court Council, using the expression “Evidence-Based Medicine”. With regard to decisions issued by the court of the State of São Paulo, the search was done at the webpage and applying the same terms and criterion as to time. Next, a qualitative analysis of the decisions was conducted for each action, to verify if the patient/plaintiff’s situation, as well as the efficacy or inefficacy of treatments or drugs addressed in existing protocols were considered before the court granted the provision claimed by the plaintiff. Results In less than one-third of the decisions there was an appropriate discussion about efficacy of the procedure sought in court, in comparison to other procedures available in clinical guidelines adopted by the Brazilian Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde) or by private health insurance plans, considering the individual situation. The majority of the decisions involved private health insurance plans (n=13, 68%). Conclusion The number of decisions that did consider scientific evidence and the peculiarities of each patient was a concern. Further discussion on Evidence-Based Medicine in judgments involving public healthcare are required.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-473
Author(s):  
Ching-Hsing Wang ◽  
Dennis Lu-Chung Weng ◽  
Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang

AbstractThis study addresses why small parties nominate candidates to run in the district elections and how nomination of district candidates could influence small parties’ share of party votes in Taiwan. Previous studies on party's strategic entry in the mixed electoral system demonstrate the existence of ‘contamination effect’ in various Western democracies. While ‘contamination effect’ suggests that party would gain more proportional representation (PR) seats by increasing its number of candidate nomination in the single-member-district (SMD) races, we contend that small parties should also take the strength of nominated candidates into consideration. Nominating strong candidates in SMD competitions could generate positive ‘spillover effect’ to party's PR tier. By focusing on the 2016 Taiwan legislative election, our findings suggest that first, small parties need to fulfill the institutional requirements in order to qualify for running in the party-list election; second, the ‘contamination effect’ exists in Taiwan, but it is conditional; and finally, candidates’ strength creates positive ‘spillover effect’ on party's proportional seats.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 146
Author(s):  
Azizah Fitriah

Every human being will one day experience a tense period in the short term when facing known problems such as career pressures, family disputes or quarrels, material pressures, and personal despair, and we will think that this is depression, which is not is an important problem because it will resolve itself, but none of these fleeting conditions is depression. Good emotional intelligence can reduce aggression, especially in adolescents. Therefore, if emotions are managed successfully, the individual will be able to entertain themselves when overwritten by sadness, can release anxiety, moodiness or offense and rise quickly again from it all. This research is field research with a correlational approach, exploring the relationship between depression and emotional intelligence in married students. The results of the hypothesis test show that between emotional intelligence and depression in married students has a significant negative relationship (XY = -0.411; sig = 0.014 <0.05). This is in accordance with the data obtained from the SPSS 19 for Windows program, stating that r table 0.334 and r xy (r hit) -0.411, said to be significant if r xy = 0.411> r table = 0.334. In other words, the higher the emotional intelligence of students who are married, the lower the possibility of depression.


Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 273-294
Author(s):  
Pallavi Shukla ◽  
Hemant Kumar Pullabhotla ◽  
Mary Arends-Kuenning

Abstract Can women's contraceptive method choice be better understood through risk compensation theory? This theory implies that people act with greater care when the perceived risk of an activity is higher and with less care when it is lower. We examine how increased over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) accompanied by marketing campaigns in India affected women's contraceptive method choices and incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Although ECPs substantially reduce the risk of pregnancy, they are less effective than other contraceptive methods and do not reduce the risk of STIs. We test whether an exogenous policy change that increased access to ECPs leads people to substitute away from other methods of contraception, such as condoms, thereby increasing the risk of both unintended pregnancy and STIs. We find evidence for risk compensation in terms of reduced use of condoms but not for increases in rates of STIs.


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