Evan K. Perrault

Evaluation of a Social Norms Approach to a Suicide Prevention Campaign

Suicide is a leading cause of death for college-aged youth, and university counseling centers (UCC) strive to educate students about mental health issues and available campus services. The current research evaluates a college campus social norms campaign that used both peer and celebrity sources to promote help seeking among college students as a suicide prevention strategy. Postcampaign surveys of this quasi-experiment (n = 391) revealed that compared to students in the control neighborhood condition, students exposed to the campaign messages in the experimental neighborhood conditions were more likely to perceive students would refer a friend to the UCC and more likely to visit the UCC for a mental health concern. Students living in the intervention neighborhood with a peer message source reported a greater willingness to refer friends to the UCC compared to those who lived in the celebrity and control neighborhoods. Regardless of condition, students who reported seeing UCC messages reported greater effects than those who reported not viewing the messages (e.g., greater intentions to seek help and to talk to others about the UCC). Results of this study are discussed within a social norms framework and support the need for continued exposure to campaign messages to impact health outcomes.

Patients’ preferences for family medicine physicians’ video biographies

ABSTRACT No studies have assessed prospective patients’ opinions regarding physician introductory videos despite their increasing prevalence. Therefore, a within-subjects experiment randomly exposed participants to five physician video biographies featuring primarily either personal or professional information. Participants’ attitudes were measured. They also selected the physician they would want to visit. Participants chose physicians with whom they perceived the greatest similarity, and indicated greater ease choosing physicians when exposed to biographies containing personal information. Future videos should be between 60 and 90 seconds. Participants appreciated videos’ abilities to show physicians’ personalities. Participants also stated what else they would like to see included in future videos.

Campus Health Centers’ Lack of Information Regarding Providers: A Content Analysis of Division-I Campus Health Centers’ Provider Websites

ABSTRACT Campus health centers are a convenient, and usually affordable, location for college students to obtain health care. Staffed by licensed and trained professionals, these providers can generally offer similar levels of care that providers at off-campus clinics can deliver. Yet, previous research finds students may forgo this convenient, on-campus option partially because of a lack of knowledge regarding the quality of providers at these campus clinics. This study sought to examine where this information deficit may come from by analyzing campus health centers’ online provider information. All Division-I colleges or universities with an on-campus health center, which had information on their websites about their providers (n = 294), had their providers’ online information analyzed (n = 2,127 providers). Results revealed that schools commonly offer professional information (e.g., provider specialties, education), but very little about their providers outside of the medical context (e.g., hobbies) that would allow a prospective student patient to more easily relate. While 181 different kinds of credentials were provided next to providers’ names (e.g., MD, PA-C, FNP-BC), only nine schools offered information to help students understand what these different credentials meant. Most schools had information about their providers within one-click of the homepage. Recommendations for improving online information about campus health center providers are offered.

Adding Multimedia Cues to Medical Providers’ Online Biographies: Do Pictures, Video, and B-Roll Matter?

Developing engaging online healthcare provider biographies for prospective patients to consult is becoming a big business. Health-care systems are beginning to add more multichannel components—like videos—to these provider search tools at increasingly higher costs. Prior research finds that prospective patients desire videos offering additional footage (i.e., b-roll) displaying how a provider might interact with a patient during a consultation. Shooting and editing b-roll footage to add to providers’ videos takes additional time and resources. Using predictions and questions generated from uncertainty reduction and cue summation theories, this study sought to determine whether the addition of multichannel media (e.g., a video with added b-roll) offers any greater effects in the form of reduced uncertainty, provider likability, patient satisfaction, or trust than biographies providing fewer multichannel cues. A between-subjects online experiment randomly exposed participants (n = 523) to one of four biographies with increasing levels of multichannel components (i.e., text only biography, text with picture, video, video with b-roll). Results revealed that the two video biographies generated more significant effects than text-only biographies. However, the biography with just the video of the provider (i.e., a-roll only) and the video including added b-roll were not significantly different from one another on any of the dependent variables measured. These findings indicate that there may be a limit to the number of multichannel components needed to be an effective biography to help patients select their next healthcare provider. Both theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, in addition to future directions for research.

Seeking Ways to Inform the Uninformed: Improving the Informed Consent Process in Online Social Science Research:

Participants often do not read consent forms in social science research. This is not surprising, especially for online studies, given they do not typically offer greater risk than what is encountered in daily life. However, if no one is reading, are participants really informed? This study used previous research to craft experimentally manipulated consent forms utilizing different visual presentations (e.g., greater use of line spacing, bullets, bolding, diagrams). Participants (n = 547) were randomly exposed to one of seven form variations. Results found no significant differences between forms in reading or comprehension. Open-ended questions asked participants why they do not read consent forms and what would influence them to read the forms. Participants most frequently stated forms need to be shorter, and important information needs to be highlighted. We suggest improvements to informed consent forms, including removing much of the information that is constant across forms, and only including unique aspects of studies.

Factors influencing patients’ choice of a physiotherapist: a study within the Swiss insurance premium-funded system

Abstract Purpose: Healthcare systems have long struggled to attract and retain patients within the competitive marketplace. Physiotherapy clinics, not immune to market pressures, also struggle to be competitive within a consumer-driven model of healthcare. To provide insight into how physiotherapists may better promote themselves, this study sought to explore the factors that influence patients’ choice of a physiotherapist, the sources from which patients seek information about physiotherapy clinics, and the factors that prompt patients to leave a physiotherapy clinic within the open marketplace of Switzerland. Methods: Ninety-four patients at a physiotherapy clinic in Ticino, the Italian province of Switzerland, completed an Institutional Review Board [IRB]-approved survey in Italian or English regarding their selection of a physiotherapist. Results: Results indicated that patients sought information about a new physiotherapist primarily from friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. A recommendation or referral was the factor that most influenced patient choices of a physiotherapist, while logistics was the most cited reason why patients quit physiotherapy. Conclusions: Patients reported a strong preference for first-hand information about physiotherapy clinics. By catering to these information-seeking preferences, clinics are able to better attract and retain patients and position themselves to compete in this competitive healthcare environment.

Primary Care Confusion—Public Knowledge of NP and PA Duties and Their Information Gathering Behaviors

As the number of medical students entering primary care as a specialty declines, this deficit is increasingly being filled by mid-level providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners (PAs and NPs). Despite these providers’ abilities to provide a similar quality of care as physicians, confusion likely exists regarding the kind of care these providers are able to deliver in comparison to the more widely understood physician profession. These problems are likely further compounded by the numerous combinations of alphabetical abbreviations appearing next to providers’ names. Prior analyses of over 2000 primary care providers’ online biographies found 181 unique combinations of alphabetical abbreviations next to names (e.g., PA-C, FNP-BC). Little is known about the public’s knowledge regarding what kinds of duties these mid-level providers can perform in comparison to physicians, nor the locations from which they seek information about providers before selecting one to visit. The current study seeks to fill this important gap.

Using an Interactive Online Quiz to Recalibrate College Students’ Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions About Phishing

Despite improved spam filtering technology, phishing continues to be a prevalent threat for college students. The current study found that approximately 4-in-10 of the students surveyed (N = 462) indicate they do not know what phishing is and the threat it poses. Students also report initially overestimating their confidence to successfully recognize phishing attempts, and underestimating their susceptibility to being the victim of an attack. By completing an interactive online phishing quiz, which explained what to look for in both counterfeit and legitimate email messages, students’ self-efficacy to identify phishing attempts increased, as did their perceived susceptibility to phishing attacks, their perceptions of the severity of phishing, their intentions to learn more about the topic, and their intentions to discuss phishing with others. These results indicate that a simple, interactive online phishing quiz could be used as an effective teaching tool to supplement existing educational attempts regarding phishing on college campuses.

Tracking Success: Outputs Versus Outcomes—A Comparison of Accredited and Non-Accredited Public Health Agencies’ Community Health Improvement Plan objectives

With funding for public health initiatives declining, creating measurable objectives that are focused on tracking and changing population outcomes (i.e., knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors), instead of those that are focused on health agencies’ own outputs (e.g., promoting services, developing communication messages) have seen a renewed focus. This study analyzed 4094 objectives from the Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs) of 280 local PHAB-accredited and non-accredited public health agencies across the United States. Results revealed that accredited agencies were no more successful at creating outcomes-focused objectives (35% of those coded) compared to non-accredited agencies (33% of those coded; Z = 1.35, p = .18). The majority of objectives were focused on outputs (accredited: 61.2%; non-accredited: 63.3%; Z = 0.72, p = .47). Outcomes-focused objectives primarily sought to change behaviors (accredited: 85.43%; non-accredited: 80.6%), followed by changes in knowledge (accredited: 9.75%; non-accredited: 10.8%) and attitudes (accredited: 1.6%; non-accredited: 5.1%). Non-accredited agencies had more double-barreled objectives (49.9%) compared to accredited agencies (32%; Z = 11.43, p < .001). The authors recommend that accreditation procedures place a renewed focus on ensuring that public health agencies strive to achieve outcomes. It is also advocated that public health agencies work with interdisciplinary teams of Health Communicators who can help them develop procedures to effectively and efficiently measure outcomes of knowledge and attitudes that are influential drivers of behavioral changes.

Sustainability attitudes and behavioral motivations of college students: Testing the extended parallel process model

Purpose A planet that can no longer sustain life is a frightening thought – and one that is often present in mass media messages. Therefore, this study aims to test the components of a classic fear appeal theory, the extended parallel process model (EPPM) and to determine how well its constructs predict sustainability behavioral intentions. This study also strove to uncover students’ motivations and attitudes that are not present in the EPPM. Design/methodology/approach An online survey of 779 college students was conducted. Findings Results reveal that both threat and efficacy are significant predictors of behavioral intention, consistent with the EPPM. However, an analysis of open-ended comments reveals that subjective normative influence and incentives also play a key role in students performing future sustainable behaviors. Practical implications These findings provide a framework to educators and message designers of sustainability groups on college campuses highlighting the importance of including multiple constructs in their messages to students. Threatening messages will not be enough to increase behavioral intentions. Fear inducing messages must be combined with messages to increase self- and response efficacy. Education is also not the only piece of the puzzle. Students state difficulty in performing some sustainable behaviors as a key barrier, indicating a need to incorporate infrastructure changes at campuses to facilitate greater ease among students to act sustainably. Originality value This study tests the EPPM’s utility in helping to find the most effective ways to influence college students’ future behavioral intentions toward acting sustainably.