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Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign

BACKGROUND: Designing a health promotion campaign is never an easy task, especially during a pandemic of a highly infectious disease such as COVID-19. In Saudi Arabia, many attempts have been made to raise public awareness about COVID-19 infection and precautionary health measures. However, most of...

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Autores principales: Alrige, Mayda, Bitar, Hind, Meccawy, Maram
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8491996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34710783
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2021.09.026
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author Alrige, Mayda
Bitar, Hind
Meccawy, Maram
author_facet Alrige, Mayda
Bitar, Hind
Meccawy, Maram
author_sort Alrige, Mayda
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Designing a health promotion campaign is never an easy task, especially during a pandemic of a highly infectious disease such as COVID-19. In Saudi Arabia, many attempts have been made to raise public awareness about COVID-19 infection and precautionary health measures. However, most of the health information delivered through the national dashboard and the COVID-19 awareness campaigns are generic and do not necessarily make the impact needed to be seen on individuals’ behavior. Health messages need to be applicable and reverent to the individual in the audience. OBJECTIVE: In light of Fogg-Behavior model, this research aims to build and validate a behavior-change-based messaging campaign to promote precautionary health behavior in individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Intervention messages can then be targeted appropriately during the pandemic. METHODS: An initial library of 32 text-based and video-based messages were developed and validated based on Fogg behavior model for behavior change. Based on this model, three groups of messages were created to reflect the model’s three theoretical concepts of motivation, ability and triggers. Each group of messages is designed to target different segment of the audience. The content of the messages was developed based on resources from the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia. The validity of this content was evaluated by domain experts through the content validity index. RESULTS: Fogg-Behavior Model was used to segment the audience into three different groups based on their perceived ability and motivation. The three groups of messages designed for those groups were found relevant to Fogg theoretical concepts. Thirteen professional health care workers (n = 13) evaluated the content of the message libraries in Arabic and English. Thirty-two messages were found to have acceptable content validity (I-CVI = 0.87). CONCLUSIONS: This research introduced Fogg Behavior Model as a behavior change model to develop targeted messages for three groups of the audience based on their motivation and ability level toward maintaining precautionary behavior during the pandemic. This targeted awareness messaging campaign can be utilized by health authorities to raise individuals’ awareness about the precautionary measures that should be taken, maintain these measures and hence help in reducing the number of positive cases in the city of Jeddah.
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spelling pubmed-84919962021-10-06 Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign Alrige, Mayda Bitar, Hind Meccawy, Maram J Infect Public Health Original Article BACKGROUND: Designing a health promotion campaign is never an easy task, especially during a pandemic of a highly infectious disease such as COVID-19. In Saudi Arabia, many attempts have been made to raise public awareness about COVID-19 infection and precautionary health measures. However, most of the health information delivered through the national dashboard and the COVID-19 awareness campaigns are generic and do not necessarily make the impact needed to be seen on individuals’ behavior. Health messages need to be applicable and reverent to the individual in the audience. OBJECTIVE: In light of Fogg-Behavior model, this research aims to build and validate a behavior-change-based messaging campaign to promote precautionary health behavior in individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Intervention messages can then be targeted appropriately during the pandemic. METHODS: An initial library of 32 text-based and video-based messages were developed and validated based on Fogg behavior model for behavior change. Based on this model, three groups of messages were created to reflect the model’s three theoretical concepts of motivation, ability and triggers. Each group of messages is designed to target different segment of the audience. The content of the messages was developed based on resources from the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia. The validity of this content was evaluated by domain experts through the content validity index. RESULTS: Fogg-Behavior Model was used to segment the audience into three different groups based on their perceived ability and motivation. The three groups of messages designed for those groups were found relevant to Fogg theoretical concepts. Thirteen professional health care workers (n = 13) evaluated the content of the message libraries in Arabic and English. Thirty-two messages were found to have acceptable content validity (I-CVI = 0.87). CONCLUSIONS: This research introduced Fogg Behavior Model as a behavior change model to develop targeted messages for three groups of the audience based on their motivation and ability level toward maintaining precautionary behavior during the pandemic. This targeted awareness messaging campaign can be utilized by health authorities to raise individuals’ awareness about the precautionary measures that should be taken, maintain these measures and hence help in reducing the number of positive cases in the city of Jeddah. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. 2021-11 2021-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8491996/ /pubmed/34710783 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2021.09.026 Text en © 2021 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Original Article
Alrige, Mayda
Bitar, Hind
Meccawy, Maram
Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title_full Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title_fullStr Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title_full_unstemmed Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title_short Promoting precautionary behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
title_sort promoting precautionary behavior during the covid-19 pandemic: development and validation of a behavior-change messaging campaign
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8491996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34710783
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jiph.2021.09.026
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