Health behaviour
How did fear and precautions change early in the 2009 flu pandemic?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
As the 2009 swine flu spread, Americans felt more likely to catch it, yet their interest in vaccines and information seeking fell, tracking the decline in news coverage rather than the actual risk.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Repeated daily cross-sectional web survey (fresh respondents each survey day, April 28 to May 26 2009) linked to state H1N1 case counts and daily newspaper coverage; regression with time trends.
- N
- N=1290 · 1290 complete responses out of 1370 who started and 45,786 invited; each survey day sampled different respondents.
- Population
- US adults from an online survey panel, sampled to approximate the national age and sex distribution
- Outcome
- Perceived likelihood of infection and perceived death toll; interest in and willingness to pay for vaccines and antivirals; information seeking and quarantine-type precautions
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Key findings
Perceived likelihood of infection rose over the month, levelling off later, and was higher in states with more confirmed cases, so perceptions tracked objective risk. In contrast, interest in preventive vaccines or antivirals and information seeking declined over time, in step with falling newspaper coverage (small but significant correlations, r up to 0.10). Willingness to accept vaccines or antivirals was predicted by perceived likelihood of infection and by already seeking information; women and people in larger households were more interested in pharmaceutical protection, and behaviour did not vary with state case counts.
Methodology
Within days of the H1N1 outbreak making headlines, the researchers ran an online survey of US adults on most days between April 28 and May 26 2009, with a new set of respondents each day. They asked about how likely people thought they were to catch H1N1, how many deaths they expected, whether they wanted and would pay for a vaccine or antiviral drugs, and whether they had sought information or taken quarantine-type steps. Answers were related to time since the outbreak, the number of confirmed cases in each respondent's state, the daily count of newspaper articles about flu, and demographic factors.
Limitations
Only a small fraction of the 45,786 people invited took part, and volunteers from a commercial web panel may have been more worried about flu than the general public. Each day's sample was different, so the study shows population averages shifting rather than individuals changing their minds, and daily samples were small. Behaviour was self-reported intentions and past actions, not actual vaccination, and the link with media coverage is a correlation over a single month that cannot show that news caused the changes.
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