DOI: 10.7910/dvn/urx0ue
title: Replication Data for: Effect of Physician-delivered COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Acknowledging Racial Inequity on Black and White Adults' Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices Related to COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial

description: This package contains replication data for: "Effect of Physician-delivered COVID-19 Public Health Messages and Messages Acknowledging Racial Inequity on Black and White Adults' Knowledge, Beliefs, and Practices Related to COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial" 

The data includes 2 raw datasets (except for removing a Zip code variable for anonymity) containing data from two online Qualtrics surveys that were conducted in 2 rounds with 20,460 observations from August 7, 2020 to September 6, 2020. 

The code, produced in R, contains both cleaning and analysis code. For further details on the data or how to run the code, please see the readme file. 

The abstract of the paper is as follows: 

Importance: Social distancing is critical to the control of COVID-19, which has disproportionately affected the black community. Physicians delivered messages may increase adhesion to these behaviors. 

Objective: To determine whether messages delivered by physicians improve COVID-19 knowledge and preventive behaviors, and to assess the differential effectiveness of messages tailored to the black community. 

Design: Participants were randomized to receive video messages on COVID-19, or placebo. 

Setting: United States nationally representative online sample recruited from August 7 to September 6, 2020.

Participants: Self-identified white and black adults with less than a college education recruited through surveying platform Lucid. Of 44,743 volunteers screened, 30,174 were eligible, 5,534 did not consent or failed attention checks, and 4,163 left the survey before randomization. The final sample has 20,460 individuals (participation rate 68%). 

Interventions: Three video on COVID-19, recorded by physicians, randomized by race. Video 1 discussed common symptoms. Video 2 highlighted case numbers; in one arm the unequal burden of the disease by race was discussed. Video 3 described CDC social distancing guidelines. An American Medical Association statement on structural racism or drug price transparency was cross-randomized. 

Main Outcomes and Measures: Knowledge, beliefs, and practices related to COVID-19, demand for information, willingness to pay for masks, and self-reported behavior.

Results: In this randomized clinical trial of US black and white adults, 18,223 participants (9,168 black and 9,055 white) completed the survey (55.9% female, mean age 40.2). The pooled intervention decreased gaps in COVID-19 knowledge (IRR: 0.890 [95% CI, 0.868 to 0.912]) and increased demand for COVID-19 information (IRR: 1.054 [95% CI, 1.005 to 1.105]), willingness to pay for a mask (difference $0.498 [95% CI, 0.147 to 0.848]). Self-reported safety behavior improved, though not significantly (IRR: 0.959, [95% CI, 0.915 to 1.005] p=0.08). Effects did not differ by race (F.stat 0.0112, p &gt;0.999) and in different arms of the intervention (F.stat 0.324 p&gt;0.999). 
 
Conclusions and Relevance: Physician messaging campaigns are effective in increasing COVID-19 knowledge, information-seeking, and self-reported protective behaviors among diverse groups. Studies implemented at scale are needed to confirm clinical importance.