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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2023 Aug 1;38(4):daab179.
doi: 10.1093/heapro/daab179.

Participant engagement with a short, wordless, animated video on COVID-19 prevention: a multi-site randomized trial

Caterina Favaretti  1 , Maya Adam  2 , Merlin Greuel  1 , Violetta Hachaturyan  1 , Jennifer Gates  3 , Till Bärnighausen  1   4   5 , Alain Vandormael  1
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Participant engagement with a short, wordless, animated video on COVID-19 prevention: a multi-site randomized trial

Caterina Favaretti et al. Health Promot Int. .

Abstract

COVID-19 misinformation has spread rapidly across social media. To counter misinformation, we designed a short, wordless and animated video (called the CoVideo) to deliver scientifically informed and emotionally compelling information about preventive COVID-19 behaviours. After 15 163 online participants were recruited from Germany, Mexico, Spain, the UK and the USA, we offered participants in the attention placebo control (APC) and do-nothing arms the option to watch the CoVideo (without additional compensation) as post-trial access to treatment. The objective of our study was to evaluate participant engagement by quantifying (i) the proportion of participants opting to watch the CoVideo and (ii) the duration of time spent watching the CoVideo. We quantified the CoVideo opt-in and view time by experimental arm, age, gender, educational status, country of residence and COVID-19 prevention knowledge. Overall engagement with the CoVideo was high: 72% of the participants [CI: 71.1%; 73.0%] opted to watch the CoVideo with an average view time of 138.9 out of 144.0 s [CI: 138.4; 139.4], with no statistically significant differences by arm. Older participants (35-59 years) and participants with higher COVID-19 prevention knowledge had higher view times than their counterparts. Spanish participants had the highest opt-in percentage whereas Germans exhibited the shortest view times of the five countries. Short, wordless and animated storytelling videos, optimized for 'viral spread' on social media, can enhance global engagement with COVID-19 prevention messages by transcending cultural, language and literary barriers.

Keywords: COVID-19; informational video; online misinformation; participant engagement; randomized controlled trial.

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Figures

Fig. 1:
Fig. 1:
Trial Design: From the main trial, 9685 participants were directed to the post-trial stage (access to treatment). Of these, 343 (3.5%) were lost, resulting in a final sample size of 9342 participants for this study.
Fig. 2:
Fig. 2:
Proportion of participants who chose to play the CoVideo (n = 9342) by age, gender, education status and country of residence.
Fig. 3:
Fig. 3:
View time among the participants who played the CoVideo (n = 6731) by age, gender, education status and country of residence.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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