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‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research

OBJECTIVE: To identify how parents judge the credibility of online health news stories with links to scientific research. DESIGN: This qualitative study interviewed parents who read online stories about e-cigarettes and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination published by top-tier US news organisatio...

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Autores principales: Maggio, Lauren A, Krakow, Melinda, Moorhead, Laura L
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7451268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32847924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039692
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author Maggio, Lauren A
Krakow, Melinda
Moorhead, Laura L
author_facet Maggio, Lauren A
Krakow, Melinda
Moorhead, Laura L
author_sort Maggio, Lauren A
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: To identify how parents judge the credibility of online health news stories with links to scientific research. DESIGN: This qualitative study interviewed parents who read online stories about e-cigarettes and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination published by top-tier US news organisations. Researchers asked participants to describe elements of a story that influenced their judgement about content credibility. Researchers analysed transcripts using inductive and deductive techniques. Deductive analysis drew on cognitive heuristics previously identified as being used by the public to judge online health information. Inductive analysis allowed the emergence of new heuristics, especially relating to health. SETTING: The US National Cancer Institute’s Audience Research Lab in Maryland, in August–November 2018. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty-four parents with at least one child between the ages of 9 and 17 residing in Maryland, Virginia, or the District of Columbia participated. Researchers randomly assigned 31 parents to the HPV vaccination story and 33 to the e-cigarette story. RESULTS: Evidence of existing heuristics, including reputation, endorsement, consistency, self-confirmation, expectancy violation and persuasive intent emerged from the interviews, with participants deeming stories credible when mentioning physicians (reputation heuristic) and/or consistent with information provided by personal physicians (consistency heuristic). Participants also described making credibility judgements based on presence of statistics, links to scientific research and their general feelings about news media. In relation to presence of statistics and links, participants reported these elements increased the credibility of the news story, whereas their feelings about the news media decreased their credibility judgement. CONCLUSIONS: Parents used a constellation of heuristics to judge the credibility of online health news stories. Previously identified heuristics for online health information are also applicable in the context of health news stories. The findings have implications for initiatives in education, health communication and journalism directed towards increasing the public’s engagement with health news and their credibility judgements.
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spelling pubmed-74512682020-09-02 ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research Maggio, Lauren A Krakow, Melinda Moorhead, Laura L BMJ Open Communication OBJECTIVE: To identify how parents judge the credibility of online health news stories with links to scientific research. DESIGN: This qualitative study interviewed parents who read online stories about e-cigarettes and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination published by top-tier US news organisations. Researchers asked participants to describe elements of a story that influenced their judgement about content credibility. Researchers analysed transcripts using inductive and deductive techniques. Deductive analysis drew on cognitive heuristics previously identified as being used by the public to judge online health information. Inductive analysis allowed the emergence of new heuristics, especially relating to health. SETTING: The US National Cancer Institute’s Audience Research Lab in Maryland, in August–November 2018. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty-four parents with at least one child between the ages of 9 and 17 residing in Maryland, Virginia, or the District of Columbia participated. Researchers randomly assigned 31 parents to the HPV vaccination story and 33 to the e-cigarette story. RESULTS: Evidence of existing heuristics, including reputation, endorsement, consistency, self-confirmation, expectancy violation and persuasive intent emerged from the interviews, with participants deeming stories credible when mentioning physicians (reputation heuristic) and/or consistent with information provided by personal physicians (consistency heuristic). Participants also described making credibility judgements based on presence of statistics, links to scientific research and their general feelings about news media. In relation to presence of statistics and links, participants reported these elements increased the credibility of the news story, whereas their feelings about the news media decreased their credibility judgement. CONCLUSIONS: Parents used a constellation of heuristics to judge the credibility of online health news stories. Previously identified heuristics for online health information are also applicable in the context of health news stories. The findings have implications for initiatives in education, health communication and journalism directed towards increasing the public’s engagement with health news and their credibility judgements. BMJ Publishing Group 2020-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7451268/ /pubmed/32847924 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039692 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
spellingShingle Communication
Maggio, Lauren A
Krakow, Melinda
Moorhead, Laura L
‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title_full ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title_fullStr ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title_full_unstemmed ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title_short ‘There were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
title_sort ‘there were some clues’: a qualitative study of heuristics used by parents of adolescents to make credibility judgements of online health news articles citing research
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7451268/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32847924
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039692
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