Instructional interventions for improving COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, behaviors: Evidence from a large-scale RCT in India

Dinsha Mistree, Prashant Loyalka, Robert Fairlie, Ashutosh Bhuradia, Manyu Angrish, Jason Lin, Amar Karoshi, Sara J Yen, Jamsheed Mistri and Vafa Bayat

Santa Cruz Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Cruz

Abstract: Seeking ways to encourage broad compliance with health guidelines during the pandemic, especially among youth, we test two hypotheses pertaining to the optimal design of instructional interventions for improving COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. We randomly assigned 8376 lower-middle income youth in urban India to three treatments: a concentrated and targeted fact-based, instructional intervention; a longer instructional intervention that provided the same facts along with underlying scientific concepts; and a control. Relative to existing efforts, we find that both instructional interventions increased COVID-19-related knowledge immediately after intervention. Relative to the shorter fact-based intervention, the longer intervention resulted in sustained improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behavior. Instead of reducing attention and comprehension by youth, the longer scientific based treatment appears to have increased understanding and retention of the material. The findings are instrumental to understanding the design of instruction and communication in affecting compliance during this and future pandemics.

Keywords: Development Studies; Human Society; Clinical Research; Clinical Trials and Supportive Activities; Prevention; Behavioral and Social Science; Mind and Body; Pediatric; Adolescent; COVID-19; Health Knowledge; Attitudes; Practice; Humans; India; Pandemics; SARS-CoV-2; Health education; Health economics; Randomized controlled trials; Health beliefs; Attitudes; Behavioral interventions; Medical and Health Sciences; Economics; Studies in Human Society; Public Health; Health sciences; Human society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: Instructional interventions for improving COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes, behaviors: Evidence from a large-scale RCT in India (2021)
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