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Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial

Electronic mental health services (eMHSs) offer additional options for the dissemination of psychological interventions for university students. Still, many university students are reluctant to use eMHSs. Narrative messages may help increase the awareness and acceptance of quality-approved programs....

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Autores principales: Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer, Harrer, Mathias, Dederichs, Melina, Fritsche, Lara, Wopperer, Jeannette, Wals, Frank, Loerbroks, Adrian, Lehr, Dirk, Salewski, Christel, Angerer, Peter, Ebert, David Daniel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8153476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34038455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252012
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author Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer
Harrer, Mathias
Dederichs, Melina
Fritsche, Lara
Wopperer, Jeannette
Wals, Frank
Loerbroks, Adrian
Lehr, Dirk
Salewski, Christel
Angerer, Peter
Ebert, David Daniel
author_facet Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer
Harrer, Mathias
Dederichs, Melina
Fritsche, Lara
Wopperer, Jeannette
Wals, Frank
Loerbroks, Adrian
Lehr, Dirk
Salewski, Christel
Angerer, Peter
Ebert, David Daniel
author_sort Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer
collection PubMed
description Electronic mental health services (eMHSs) offer additional options for the dissemination of psychological interventions for university students. Still, many university students are reluctant to use eMHSs. Narrative messages may help increase the awareness and acceptance of quality-approved programs. However, little is known about the usefulness of narrative messages to improve attitudes towards eMHSs. In this experiment, we thus aimed to explore in how far different ways of targeting information to students affect their attitudes towards eMHSs for stress prevention and therapy, and to identify potential determinants of attitude change. N = 451 students (Mean = 32.6 years, SD = 10.2, 75% female, 7% with eMHS experience) were randomly assigned to one of four study arms involving information designed to induce different levels of perceived similarity. While the active control condition only received general information (arm 1, “information only”, n = 116), the other experimental arms were additionally exposed to testimonials on specific eMHSs either addressing an unspecified audience (arm 2, n = 112), employees (arm 3, n = 115) or working university students (arm 4, n = 108). Two-way ANOVA revealed no impact of information on the alteration of attitudes towards eMHSs for stress coping (d = 0.20). Only a small effect of target-group specific testimonials on attitudes towards online therapies was identified at post-intervention (d = 0.29). Regression analyses demonstrated significant influences of source credibility and perceived similarity on attitudes for preventative eMHSs (p(s)<0.01), as well as a partial mediation effect of perceived similarity in favor of testimonials targeted to students (95% CI [0.22, 0.50]). Overall, this study indicated no meaningful impact of information on attitudes and limited evidence for benefits of tailored narrative messages. Since attitudes were already positive at baseline, further research with a representative student sample mimicking real-world decision scenarios is needed to gain an in-depth understanding of acceptance-facilitating message features that may contribute to promote the adoption of evidence-based eMHSs.
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spelling pubmed-81534762021-06-09 Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer Harrer, Mathias Dederichs, Melina Fritsche, Lara Wopperer, Jeannette Wals, Frank Loerbroks, Adrian Lehr, Dirk Salewski, Christel Angerer, Peter Ebert, David Daniel PLoS One Research Article Electronic mental health services (eMHSs) offer additional options for the dissemination of psychological interventions for university students. Still, many university students are reluctant to use eMHSs. Narrative messages may help increase the awareness and acceptance of quality-approved programs. However, little is known about the usefulness of narrative messages to improve attitudes towards eMHSs. In this experiment, we thus aimed to explore in how far different ways of targeting information to students affect their attitudes towards eMHSs for stress prevention and therapy, and to identify potential determinants of attitude change. N = 451 students (Mean = 32.6 years, SD = 10.2, 75% female, 7% with eMHS experience) were randomly assigned to one of four study arms involving information designed to induce different levels of perceived similarity. While the active control condition only received general information (arm 1, “information only”, n = 116), the other experimental arms were additionally exposed to testimonials on specific eMHSs either addressing an unspecified audience (arm 2, n = 112), employees (arm 3, n = 115) or working university students (arm 4, n = 108). Two-way ANOVA revealed no impact of information on the alteration of attitudes towards eMHSs for stress coping (d = 0.20). Only a small effect of target-group specific testimonials on attitudes towards online therapies was identified at post-intervention (d = 0.29). Regression analyses demonstrated significant influences of source credibility and perceived similarity on attitudes for preventative eMHSs (p(s)<0.01), as well as a partial mediation effect of perceived similarity in favor of testimonials targeted to students (95% CI [0.22, 0.50]). Overall, this study indicated no meaningful impact of information on attitudes and limited evidence for benefits of tailored narrative messages. Since attitudes were already positive at baseline, further research with a representative student sample mimicking real-world decision scenarios is needed to gain an in-depth understanding of acceptance-facilitating message features that may contribute to promote the adoption of evidence-based eMHSs. Public Library of Science 2021-05-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8153476/ /pubmed/34038455 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252012 Text en © 2021 Apolinário-Hagen et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Apolinário-Hagen, Jennifer
Harrer, Mathias
Dederichs, Melina
Fritsche, Lara
Wopperer, Jeannette
Wals, Frank
Loerbroks, Adrian
Lehr, Dirk
Salewski, Christel
Angerer, Peter
Ebert, David Daniel
Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title_full Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title_fullStr Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title_short Exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: Four-group randomized controlled trial
title_sort exploring the influence of testimonial source on attitudes towards e-mental health interventions among university students: four-group randomized controlled trial
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8153476/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34038455
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252012
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