Past experiences with surprise medical bills drive issue knowledge, concern and attitudes toward federal policy intervention

Scholars and journalists have devoted considerable attention to understanding the circumstances in which Americans receive surprise medical bills. Previous research on this issue has focused on the scope of the problem, including the conditions that are most likely to lead to surprise bills. However, the existing literature has almost exclusively relied on claims data, limiting our understanding of consumer experiences and attitudes toward policy changes to address surprise billing. Using a survey administered to a nationally representative sample of 4998 Americans, we analyze consumer experiences with surprise billing, knowledge of the issue, how concerned Americans are about receiving surprise bills and how past experiences influence policy preferences toward federal action on surprise billing. Our analysis demonstrates that knowledge and concern about surprise billing are the highest among the educated and those who have previously received a surprise bill. These factors also predict support for federal policy action, with high levels of support for federal policy action across the population, including among both liberals and conservatives. However, more detailed federal policy proposals receive significantly less support among Americans, suggesting that stand-alone policy action may not be viable. Our results show bipartisan support among American consumers for federal action on surprise billing in the abstract but no consistent views on specific policy proposals.

Duanzi as Networked Practice: How Online Satire Shapes Psychological Well-Being, Social Support, and Issue Knowledge for Chinese with Different Social Capital during COVID-19 Outbreaks

Practices oriented to digital technologies are being invented to change how people cope with crises. This study examines how Chinese netizens’ networked practices (e.g., liking, sharing, or commenting) with COVID-19 related duanzi (short online satires) influenced their psychological well-being, external social support, and issue knowledge during the pandemic. The role of social capital in moderating these relations is explored. Findings from the survey demonstrate that the act of “liking” a COVID-19 duanzi on WeChat has become a routine practice for Chinese netizens to kill time during the quarantine. However, the more bonding social capital one already had, the less they depended on duanzi “liking” to kill their boredom. Those less supported outside the family household, or less knowledgeable about the virus were also more likely to share a COVID-19 duanzi. Bonding social capital promotes one’s well-being, therefore, the positive psychological effect of duanzi sharing or commenting grows more pronounced for netizens with more bonding social capital. Bridging social capital brought external social support. Netizens with more bridging social capital obtained more external support and more COVID-19 knowledge from duanzi sharing. The theoretical and practical implications are elaborated in the conclusions.

COVID-19 as a Research Dynamic Transformer: Emerging Cross-Disciplinary and National Characteristics

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on humanity as well as research activities in life sciences and medicine. Between January and August 2020, the number of coronavirus-related scientific articles was roughly 50 times more than that of articles published in the entire year of 2019 in PubMed. It is necessary to better understand the dynamics of research on COVID-19, an emerging topic, and suggest ways to understand and improve the quality of research. We analyze the dynamics of coronavirus research before and after the outbreaks of SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 by examining all the published articles from the past 25 years in PubMed. We delineate research networks on coronaviruses as we identify experts’ background in terms of topics of previous research, affiliations, and international co-authorships. Two distinct dynamics of coronavirus research were found: 1) in the cases of regional pandemics, SARS and MERS, the scope of cross-disciplinary research remained between neighboring research areas; 2) in the case of the global pandemic, COVID-19, research activities have spread beyond neighboring disciplines with little transnational collaboration. Thus, COVID-19 has transformed the structure of research on coronaviruses as an emerging issue. Knowledge on COVID-19 is distributed across the widest range of disciplines, transforming research networks well beyond the field of medicine but within national boundaries. Given the unprecedented scale of COVID-19 and the nationalization of responses, the most likely way forward is to accumulate local knowledge with the awareness of transdisciplinary research dynamics.

Magnitude, Factors Associated with Cesarean Delivery and Its Appropriateness

Inappropriate use of CS can have profoundly negative consequences for women and the broader community. A recent meeting of the International Confederation of Midwifes, the International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetrics and the Gates Foundation to discuss the impact of rising CS rates on maternal and infant mortality in LMICs highlights the international importance of the issue. Knowledge of CS determinants is a first step in the effort to define strategies to reduce unnecessary CSs. Previous studies showed that the main reasons for performing CS are clinical factors. However, non-clinical factors such as demographic, health system factors, organizational variables were overlooked determinants that best predicted which women have a higher risk of CS.

Tobacco Control as an LGBTQ+ Issue: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Recommendations from LGBTQ+ Community Leaders

Tobacco companies use price discounts, including coupons and rebates, to market their products. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) communities are targeted by these marketing strategies, contributing to inequitably high tobacco use. Some localities have adopted policies restricting tobacco price discounts; for successful implementation, community buy-in is crucial. From July–October 2018, Equality California staff conducted semi-structured interviews with seven participants in Los Angeles, CA. Themes included familiarity with tobacco price discounts, their perceived impact on tobacco use in LGBTQ+ communities, and attitudes toward potential policy restrictions. Interview notes were analyzed using a deductive approach to qualitative analysis. Awareness of tobacco price discounts varied; some interviewees were familiar, while others expressed surprise at their ubiquity. Price discounts were seen to disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ individuals, especially those who additionally identify with other vulnerable groups, including young people and communities of color. Support for policy restrictions was unanimous; however, interviewees expressed concern over political opposition and emphasized a need for culturally competent outreach to LGBTQ+ communities. Community organizations are essential in mobilizing support for policy reform. Understanding the perceptions and recommendations of community leaders provides tools for policy action, likely improving outcomes to reduce LGBTQ+ tobacco use through restricting tobacco price discounts.

News gap in a digital news environment: Calibrating editorial importance from user-rated news quality and identifying user characteristics that close the news gap

While previous studies have found a clear gap between users’ news preferences and editors’ news choices, whether a similar user–editor gap exists when it comes to news quality evaluations remains an open question. We therefore conducted a nation-wide survey of 7810 South Korean users, collected online social indicators from a digital news platform, and asked users and editors to evaluate the quality of 1500 news articles and rank-order these articles’ editorial importance, respectively. Even after controlling for users’ news preferences and news genres, we found that users distinguished news articles quality in a manner comparable to that of editors. Our analysis also showed that users with higher issue involvement, issue knowledge, or ideological strength tended to rate news quality similar to editors. Moreover, we found that ideological strength served as an alternative cognitive schema for issue knowledge for individuals who lacked sufficient knowledge to assess news quality.

Nutritional knowledge, attitude and behaviours regarding Coronavirus Disease 2019 among residents of Gonabad, Iran

Objective: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory disease and a major global health-related issue. Knowledge, attitude and behaviours associated with this disease are being developed. Infected animals and consumption of contaminated foods are probably the main sources of this viral infection. Adhering to a healthy diet is effective in preventing patient affliction and recovery. Thus, the present research aims to determine the nutritional knowledge, attitude and behaviours associated with COVID-19 among Residents of Gonabad, Iran. Design: The present online cross-sectional survey was conducted in March 2020 on 389 people selected through convenient sampling method. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire developed by the present researchers comprising four sections: demographic information, knowledge, attitude and nutritional behaviour. The collected data were analysed statistically in SPSS. Setting: Gonabad city in Khorasan Razavi in the Northeast of Iran. Participants: All people at or above 18 years of age. Results: The present results revealed that the mean age of the participants was 37·3 ± 11·3 years. The mean scores for knowledge, attitude and nutritional behaviour were, respectively, 9·7 ± 1·4, 14·3 ± 3·5 and 29·6 ± 4·2. The mean scores for nutritional knowledge and attitude showed no statistically significant correlation with age, education, occupation, marital status and economic status. However, the mean nutritional behaviour score was significantly higher among women than men (P = 0·004). Conclusions: Participants’ nutritional attitude and behaviour regarding COVID-19, at its early stage in Iran, were average and above average. The public education provided with this regard can have affected this result.

H. COLLINS'S PROJECT FOR DEVELOPING A RELATIVISTIC EMPIRICAL PROGRAMME IN SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE

The main idea of the project discussed in the article is that the production of scientific knowledge is not only an experimental process. Convention among scientists is played a special role in the acceptance of theory. To demon-strate this idea, H. Collins and co-authors of the relativistic empirical programme in the sociology of science publish a special issue “Knowledge and Controversy: Studies of Modern Natural Science”. The results obtained by the authors are discussed in this article.