The Planned Risk Information Seeking Model Applied to Vaccine Information Avoidance and the Role of Affect, Emotion and Perceived Benefits.

Using a stratified sample of German residents ( = 1,508), we examined intentions to avoid information about vaccination against COVID-19. The study was guided by the planned risk information seeking model (PRISM), also taking into consideration benefit perceptions, positive affective responses, and discrete emotions. Our findings generally supported the utility of the extended PRISM to predict information avoidance intentions; most of the hypothesized relationships were supported and the model accounted for 58.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Cameroon: The Role of Medical Mistrust and Social Media Use.

Most African countries report low COVID-19 vaccination rates (Msellati et al., 2022; WHO Africa; 2020). This study focuses on factors associated with vaccine hesitancy specifically in the country of Cameroon.

The Roles of Social Media Use and Medical Mistrust in Black Americans' COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: The RISP Model Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to healthcare and public health messaging in the United States. One area of focus has been vaccination uptake among Black Americans, who have experienced COVID-19 deaths disproportionate to their share of the United States population, raising questions about the processes involved in vaccination perceptions and behaviors. Guided by the Risk Information Seeking and Processing model, this study explored the roles of medical mistrust and social media as a source of risk information in Black Americans' vaccine hesitancy.

A Google Trends Analysis of Interest in Nonbinary Identities.

Emerging research on stigma suggests that society's mistreatment of nonbinary individuals can, in part, be attributed to public uncertainty and a lack of knowledge about nonbinary identities. In response to this, this study drew upon the theoretical framework of uncertainty management to explore research questions related to nonbinary identity and information behaviors by investigating uncertainty management as evidenced by longitudinal Google Trends data related to nonbinary gender identities. If individuals were found to be engaging in information seeking, the result of this behavior may be that they become less likely to hold stigmatizing attitudes toward nonbinary people, and ultimately be less likely to engage in discrimination toward them.

When Experts Offer Conflicting Information: A Study of Perceived Ambiguity, Information Insufficiency, Trustworthiness and Risk Information Behaviors.

This study conducted an experiment to examine the impact of informational conflicts about COVID-19 transmission routes on cognitive and behavioral factors. We were guided by the risk information seeking and processing model and focused on relationships among perceived ambiguity, information insufficiency, trustworthiness, and seeking/avoidance across several conditions. Data from 304 participants indicated a higher level of perceived ambiguity in the conflicting information condition compared to the one-sided information condition.

Avoiding Covid-19 risk information in the United States: The role of attitudes, norms, affect, social dominance orientations, and perceived trustworthiness of scientists.

This study seeks guidance from the planned risk information avoidance model to explore drivers of risk information avoidance in the context of COVID-19. Data were collected early during the pandemic. Among our most notable results is that participants who are more oriented toward social dominance and are more skeptical of scientists' credibility have (1) more supportive attitudes toward risk information avoidance and (2) feel social pressure to avoid risk information.

The Impact of Emotion and Government Trust on Individuals' Risk Information Seeking and Avoidance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-country Comparison.

This study examines the emotional mechanisms of how public trust in the governments' actions to address the COVID-19 pandemic shapes individuals' risk information-seeking and avoidance. To make cross-cultural comparisons, we conducted a multi-country survey early in the pandemic in South Korea, the United States (US) and Singapore. The results suggest that trust was negatively related to fear, anger, sadness and anxiety, and positively related to hope.

Promoting support for community water fluoridation: Testing message effects and the role of normative beliefs.

Background: Despite evidence that community water fluoridation (CWF) protects oral health, improves health equity, is safe and cost-effective, and contributes to social well-being, little is known regarding which of these benefits should be highlighted to effectively influence support for CWF.

Methods: This within-participants study examines differences in CWF support in response to pro-CWF messages reflecting themes of oral health, health equity, CWF safety, cost-effectiveness, or social well-being among a sample of parents. Prior belief that CWF has health benefits, worry about potential health risks, and normative beliefs were also examined as independent predictors of support for each theme.

U.S. Political Partisanship and COVID-19: Risk Information Seeking and Prevention Behaviors.

The global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) poses serious health risks to humans; yet, despite recommendations by governments and health organizations, a significant number of Americans are not engaging in preventive behaviors. To understand and explain this phenomenon, we seek guidance from a theoretical model that merges the risk information seeking and processing model and the theory of planned behavior. Furthermore, given the politicized nature of the pandemic in the U.

Exploring low-income African American and Latinx caregiver perspectives on asthma control in their children and reactions to messaging materials.

Background: African-American and Latinx children suffer from higher rates of uncontrolled asthma and poorer outcomes compared to white children. Sociocultural factors play a prominent role in how caregivers navigate asthma control for their children.

Objectives: (1) Explore the knowledge, perceptions and behaviors of Latinx and African-American caregivers related to their children's asthma and identify barriers to achieving asthma control; and (2) Elicit caregiver responses to messaging materials intended to help them better recognize uncontrolled asthma and seek timely medical treatment.

Social media conversations about community water fluoridation: formative research to guide health communication.

Objectives: Community water fluoridation (CWF) is one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Despite this achievement, there are still misunderstandings about the safety of water fluoridation. Previous communication campaigns advocating CWF have been unsuccessful in combating these misunderstandings, suggesting a need for a new way to promote CWF.

Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation on Information Seeking, Avoidance, and Processing: A Multicountry Comparative Study.

We examined the implications of exposure to misinformation about COVID-19 in the United States, South Korea, and Singapore in the early stages of the global pandemic. The online survey results showed that misinformation exposure reduced information insufficiency, which subsequently led to greater information avoidance and heuristic processing, as well as less systematic processing of COVID-19 information. Indirect effects differ by country and were stronger in the U.

Race/Ethnic Variations in Predictors of Health Consciousness Within the Cancer Prevention Context.

Purpose: Although the literature establishes a link between health consciousness (HC) and prevention behavior, less explored are the individual, social, and health characteristics that are associated with increased HC. Similarly, underexamined is the influence of race and ethnicity on the relationship of these characteristics to higher levels of HC.

Design: This cross-sectional study aims to identify and assess the relative importance of factors associated with higher levels of HC, highlighting the role of race and ethnicity.

No Regrets When It Comes to Your Health: Anticipated Regret, Subjective Norms, Information Insufficiency and Intent to Seek Health Information from Multiple Sources.

Research suggests that a search for health information from diverse sources is crucial for obtaining accurate and quality information. As a result, this study examines motivators of intentions to use multiple information sources. Our guiding framework is the planned risk information seeking model, which poses a direct relationship between seeking-related subjective norms and information seeking intentions, and an indirect relationship between those two variables through information insufficiency (or perceived need for more information).

Microbiologists' Public Engagement Views and Behaviors.

In this study, we present results from an extensive survey of US-based microbiologists (adults) to explore these scientists' perceptions and behaviors related to communicating their research. Specifically, we explored the frequency with which microbiologists engage in public communication, how they evaluate their public communication experiences, and the factors associated with their willingness to engage in face-to-face and online public communication in the future. Data from a multi-wave online survey suggest that microbiologists (N = 903) are somewhat frequent communicators who derive great value from their outreach efforts.

An analysis of nanoscientists as public communicators.

The American public remains unfamiliar with nanotechnology despite more than a decade of investment and development. Nanoscientists have an opportunity to contribute to public conversations about their work, and its potential implications, through their engagement with lay audiences and media professionals. Indeed, the leaderships of many professional scientific organizations have placed a renewed focus on the public communication of science, particularly in the light of drastic changes in the information landscape and the increasing politicization of many technological and scientific issues.

PRISM: a planned risk information seeking model.

Recent attention on health-related information seeking has focused primarily on information seeking within specific health and health risk contexts. This study attempts to shift some of that focus to individual-level variables that may impact health risk information seeking across contexts. To locate these variables, the researcher posits an integrated model, the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM).

Designing e-health interventions for low-health-literate culturally diverse parents: addressing the obesity epidemic.

Child and adolescent obesity is a significant problem contributing to long-term trends in adult obesity. Educating parents about strategies for raising healthy children is complicated by the problem of low health literacy. E-health provides new opportunities to educate lowhealth-literate audiences, and this project was intended as formative research to guide design of interventions for low-health-literate parents.

Perceptions of infertility information and support sources among female patients who access the Internet.

Objective: To evaluate perceived helpfulness of and reliance on infertility information and support sources and correlates of online information and support seeking among infertile women.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting: Web site of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.

Studying heuristic-systematic processing of risk communication.

Using a model of risk information seeking and processing developed by Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999), this study looks at predictors of the processing strategies that people apply to health risk information. Specifically, this article focuses on one relationship within the model--the relationship between perceived amount of information needed to deal with a risk and heuristic-systematic processing. Perceived amount of information needed refers to the gap between one's understanding of a risk and the level of understanding that one needs in order to make a decision about that risk.

Attributions in explanations of risk estimates.

In the spring of 1993, nearly 40 percent of Milwaukee-area residents experienced a nationally publicized outbreak of cryptosporidium, a parasite that infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Using open-ended survey data gathered from 610 adult residents in the wake of that outbreak, this study looks at factors related to the ways in which people make sense of their quantitative personal risk estimates. The concepts of informal reasoning and attribution aided this endeavor.