Matching Items (3)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

133588-Thumbnail Image.png

Assessing Practices and Perceptions of Supplements Among College Students

Description
With the new independence of adulthood, college students are a group susceptible to adopting unsupported, if not harmful, health practices. A survey of Arizona State University undergraduate students (N=200) was conducted to evaluate supplement use, trust in information sources, and beliefs about supplement regulation. Of those who reported using supplements,…

With the new independence of adulthood, college students are a group susceptible to adopting unsupported, if not harmful, health practices. A survey of Arizona State University undergraduate students (N=200) was conducted to evaluate supplement use, trust in information sources, and beliefs about supplement regulation. Of those who reported using supplements, college students most frequently received information from friends and family. STEM majors in fields unrelated to health who were taking a supplement were found to be less likely to receive information about the supplement from a medical practitioner than those in health fields or those in non-STEM majors (-26.9%, p=0.018). STEM majors in health-related fields were 15.0% more likely to treat colds and/or cold symptoms with research-supported methods identified from reliable sources, while non-health STEM and non-STEM majors were more likely to take unsupported cold treatments (p=0.010). Surveyed students, regardless of major, also stated they would trust a medical practitioner for supplement advice above other sources (88.0%), and the majority expressed a belief that dietary supplements are approved/regulated by the government (59.8%).
ContributorsPerez, Jacob Tanner (Author) / Hendrickson, Kirstin (Thesis director) / Lefler, Scott (Committee member) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
148479-Thumbnail Image.png

Accuracy in Spotting Misinformation about COVID-19: A Pilot Intervention and the Role of Political Affiliation

Description

In the past year, considerable misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has circulated on social media platforms. Faced with this pervasive issue, it is important to identify the extent to which people are able to spot misinformation on social media and ways to improve people’s accuracy in spotting misinformation. Therefore, the…

In the past year, considerable misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic has circulated on social media platforms. Faced with this pervasive issue, it is important to identify the extent to which people are able to spot misinformation on social media and ways to improve people’s accuracy in spotting misinformation. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate people’s accuracy in spotting misinformation, the effectiveness of a game-based intervention, and the role of political affiliation in spotting misinformation. In this study, 235 participants played a misinformation game in which they evaluated COVID-19-related tweets and indicated whether or not they thought each of the tweets contained misinformation. Misinformation accuracy was measured using game scores, which were based on the correct identification of misinformation. Findings revealed that participants’ beliefs about how accurate they are at spotting misinformation about COVID-19 did not predict their actual accuracy. Participants’ accuracy improved after playing the game, but democrats were more likely to improve than republicans.
ContributorsKang, Rachael (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Bunker, Cameron (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
166185-Thumbnail Image.png

Exploring Prompt-Based Methods for COVID-19 Misinformation Classification

Description
Increasing misinformation in social media channels has become more prevalent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as countless myths and rumors have circulated over the internet. This misinformation has potentially lethal consequences as many people make important health decisions based on what they read online, thus creating an urgent…

Increasing misinformation in social media channels has become more prevalent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic as countless myths and rumors have circulated over the internet. This misinformation has potentially lethal consequences as many people make important health decisions based on what they read online, thus creating an urgent need to combat it. Although many Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques have been used to identify misinformation in text, prompt-based methods are under-studied for this task. This work explores prompt learning to classify COVID-19 related misinformation. To this extent, I analyze the effectiveness of this proposed approach on four datasets. Experimental results show that prompt-based classification achieves on average ~13% and ~6% improvement compared to a single-task and multi-task model, respectively. Moreover, analysis shows that prompt-based models can achieve competitive results compared to baselines in a few-shot learning scenario.
ContributorsBrown, Clinton (Author) / Baral, Chitta (Thesis director) / Walker, Shawn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2022-05