Developing Measures of Negative Effects From Contradictory E-Cig Information Exposure

• In Event: HIGH-DENSITY: Effects of Public Information on Health Outcomes

Abstract

Scientific disagreement about health information is a common state of affairs that can undermine public health attitudes and knowledge. Effects including confusion, information overload, and backlash could indirectly produce “spillover” effects such as intentions to seek health information and reduced trust in scientific research. This study contributes to this ongoing research by empirically constructing and validating efficient and effective scales, correlating with these important dependent variables for a population of interest. With a sample of smokers and non-smokers (N = 639) on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we adapted information overload, backlash, and confusion about electronic cigarettes’ (“e-cigs”) information, a new domain of conflicting health information and uncertainty. We empirically tested the items for conceptual redundancy and distinctiveness and evaluated their discriminant and predictive validity. Our results suggest separating information overload into two distinct constructs in a reduced scale that captures the underlying factor structure while being concise for future research.

Authors

• Natalie Herbert, Annenberg School for Communication, U of Pennsylvania

• Sijia Yang, U of Pennsylvania

• Julia Mary Alber, California Polytechnic State U

• Qinghua Yang, Texas Christian University

• Yotam Ophir, The Annenberg School for Communication at the U of Pennsylvania

• Joseph N. Cappella, U of Pennsylvania