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I put together a survey experiment this morning to figure out what will motivate people to take personal steps to limit the spread of the corona virus. 1/x
From the data I’ve gathered so far, the answer is that people need to understand that this virus could be deadly for the obese/overweight. If I were replicating or iterating, I’d try to parse out how to best raise the stakes. 2/x
Priming people with the statement below increased self-reported likelihood to quarantine by 13 percentage points over control, and increased distancing by 6 percentage points (lower due to ceiling effects) 3/x
Priming people with how effective social distancing has been in some places produced almost no effect. 4/x
Similarly, priming people with the notion that it is likely to move through a household and infect everyone had no effect. 5/x
It’s my hope that this might inspire either a change in tone or additional testing from folks doing health policy communications/research right now. These data aren’t perfect, but they’re strongly suggestive. 6/x
The problem isn’t that people *don’t know* that they should be staying home or that they don’t know that staying home is working, it’s that they don’t understand their personal risk wrt the virus. 7/x
And while we don’t know what the mortality rate is for obese/overweight people precisely, we know it’s higher. 8/x
Since I paid for this on my own, I’m making the survey instrument, data, and my code available (links at the bottom of the thread.) 9/x
Data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12S0f2kIv2S_EN0CdnR4i4HyR2UxdvswZvn6sP0NaKFY/edit?usp=sharing
Code:">https://docs.google.com/spreadshe... https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Yib5xKwe7Mevy2uga7zD5TqXhMVru-lnutPg8IuV_s/edit?usp=sharing
Survey">https://docs.google.com/document/... Instrument: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Nb5rnB3wdu0bN4hADRQJCvvK6mGaImIK75-9k59Fpg/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/document/...
Code:">https://docs.google.com/spreadshe... https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Yib5xKwe7Mevy2uga7zD5TqXhMVru-lnutPg8IuV_s/edit?usp=sharing
Survey">https://docs.google.com/document/... Instrument: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Nb5rnB3wdu0bN4hADRQJCvvK6mGaImIK75-9k59Fpg/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/document/...
