Everyday Research Methods

Increasing vaccination rates in evidence-based ways

One of the evidence-based techniques was to "say because," as these ads illustrate.
Images used with permission from the Government of Jersey

Jersey is a self-governing island in the English Channel off the northwest coast of France. Its population is around 108,000. After the COVID-19 vaccine became widely available, the island's government started campaigns to encourage people to get their shots.  Rather than making up communication strategies that just seemed right, they decided to design strategies based on social psychological evidence.  This article describes the studies they used and how they applied them. Let's take a look. 

Strategy: Say because

One strategy mentioned in the article involves the word "because."

The study:

Ellen Langer demonstrated the persuasive power of the word “because” in her famous studies in the 1970s. People waiting in line to use a photocopier were asked “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier?” 60 percent agreed. But when the request was accompanied with a reason — “May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”—94 percent complied.

[...] even when the word because was followed with a completely meaningless reason — such as “May I use the Xerox machine, because I have to make copies?” just as many people said yes. The study wonderfully demonstrates the motivational influence of the word “because” and its continually reinforced association with the good rationales that typically follow it.

The application:

But just because people pay more attention to the word “because” doesn’t mean that what comes after is less important. Hence our two-step “because-then-reason” strategy. First, we prominently included the word “because” in our vaccination outreach campaigns. Then we followed the word “because” with a personalized reason meaningful to that particular messenger (and their audience).

The images in this post show examples of how the posters highlighted the word because. 

Questions about this strategy:

a)  Before basing an intervention on an empirical study, we'd better be sure that study was experimental (rather than correlational). Why?

b) What were the variables in Langer's study, and what were the levels?  Do you think that Langer's study was experimental or correlational? What are the clues? 

 

Strategy: Build ownership

The study:

A 2020 mega-study conducted by several dozen researchers led by Wharton School professor Katy Milkman demonstrated how a simple change to a text message increased uptake of flu shots. Reminder messages that included the words “your vaccine is reserved for you” boosted rates by as much as 11 percent compared to standard messages such as “protect yourself by getting a flu shot.”

The application:

Milkman’s study provided the inspiration for us to adopt a similar approach in the emails and texts we sent on behalf of the Government of Jersey to citizens whose turn it was to receive their Covid-19 vaccine. The words “your vaccine” were designed to give readers that sense of personal ownership.

c) What were the variables in Milkman's study? What were the levels of each variable?

d) Do you think Milkman's study was experimental or correlational? Explain your answer

e) Why do you think the journalist described this as a "mega-study"? Follow the link to test your hunch. 

f)  The journalist seems to mention only two levels of the independent variable in Milkman's study (the words “your vaccine is reserved for you” versus “protect yourself by getting a flu shot.”). But in the Milkman et al.'s actual study, there were many more levels. Check the link to the study to find out how many other conditions the researchers tested. 

 

Note to Instructors: Figure 1 of Milkman's study shows the effect sizes and CIs for all of the different interventions they tried. It's a really nice way to introduce these statistical concepts. 

 

Evidence-based tips for procrastination

What do the studies suggest about why people procrastinate? Photo credit: Timothy Hodgkinson/Shutterstock

The BBC magazine, Science Focus, collected a set of studies on procrastination that might help students at the beginning of a new school year.  The journalist opens with a couple of simple frequency claims. 

[If you procrastinate,] you’re not alone: an estimated 20 per cent of adults (and above 50 per cent of students) regularly procrastinate.

Then the article addresses three topics: 1. Is procrastination a sign of poor time management? 2. Is procrastination unhealthy? 3. How can we stop? Let's take each topic and apply some research methods content as we go.

1. Is procrastination a sign of poor time management?

The journalist quoted psychologist Fuschia Sirois, who explained that contrary to what many people believe, procrastinators aren't more likely to be bad at time management. Instead, she explains, it's about emotion regulation:

“At its core, procrastination is about not being able to manage your moods and emotions. Although many think impulsivity and self-control are the problems – and they do play a factor – underneath is a poor emotional response.”

As Sirois explains, every person faces stressful situations, demanding tasks that trigger brain activity that involves a brain region known amygdala. And it’s the amygdala that processes emotions and signals threats, capable of prompting a ‘fight or flight’ response linked to procrastination.

“Interestingly, people who say they are chronic procrastinators tend to have larger grey matter volume in the amygdala,” says Sirois.

“This means they will also be more sensitive to the potential negative consequences of their actions, leading to more negative emotions and procrastination.”

a) What were the variables in the amygdala study? Was this study correlational or experimental? 

b) Sketch a scatterplot (or bar graph) of the results Dr. Sirois describes here.

 

2. Is procrastination "bad for your health"?

The journalist implies causality with this headline, and with lines like these: 

...procrastination can cause a lot more problems than missed deadlines. Over decades Sirois has examined the impact of chronic procrastinating on a person’s health, her findings worrying at best – and downright terrifying at worst.

Let's see if the evidence can support these causal claims. He quotes Dr. Sirois again, who stated, 

“People who chronically procrastinate – people who make it a habit – have higher levels of stress and a greater number of acute health problems. They are more likely to have headaches or insomnia or digestive issues. And they’re more susceptible to the flu and colds.”

Even more alarming, Sirois has found that procrastination is a factor that can lead to hypertension and cardiovascular disease, with chronic procrastinators more likely to put off healthy behaviour such as exercise.

c) Is Dr. Sirois describing correlational or experimental evidence here? (Explain your answer by specifying the variables she mentions).

d) Why can't the evidence described by Dr. Sirois support the journalist's assertions about "the impact of chronic procrastinating"? Specify the temporal precedence problem and the internal validity problems here (when you discuss internal validity, specify a particular third, or "C" variable that might correlate with both A and B). 

3. How can we stop procrastinating?

In this section, the journalist describes some intervention studies targeting procrastination.

For example, one compelling Psychological Science paper described how downsizing larger metrics of time (think 48 hours instead of 2 days, or 10,950 days instead of 30 years) can make events seem more immediate, prompting people to engage in upcoming tasks.

You can follow the underlined link in the quoted text (above) to see that this paper described several experiments (for example, the abstract states, "we manipulated time metric".

e) Given the journalist's description (and the empirical study's abstract), name the independent variable in this experiment and name its levels.

f) Name the dependent variable in this experiment.

g) Sketch a bar graph of the study's result, as described by the journalist. 

h). Because this study was an experiment, it is more likely to support causation.
Think about something you have to do in the near future. How can you apply the results from the Lewis and Oyserman study in Psychological Science to that task, to prevent yourself from procrastinating on it? 

 

Selected Answers

a) One variable was "saying you are a chronic procrastinator or not" and the other was "volume of grey matter in the amygdala". Both variables must have been measured, so this was a correlational study.  

b) One axis should have "grey matter volume in amygdala" and the other should have "level of chronic procrastination"; the scatterplot should have a positive slope, but you don't have information on how strong the relationship was, so you can't really know how spread out the dots should be. 

c) This is likely correlational evidence. They are measuring (not manipulating) people's procrastination habits. They are measuring (one cannot manipulate) people's acute health problems, susceptibility to the flu, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. 

d) We can take acute health problems as an example. Even if there is an association between chronic procrastination (A) and acute health problems (B), we still don't know if the procrastination led to the health problems (A to B), or if the health problems lead to more procrastination (B to A). In addition, there could be some outside variable such as life stressors or poverty (C) that is associated with both procrastination (A) and health problems (B). 

e) The independent variable is apparently "time metric" and the levels were hours vs. days, or perhaps days versus years. 

f) The dependent variable seems to be "how immediate events seem to be"

g) The x-axis should have hours and days, and the y-axis should indicate "how immediate events seem to be". The bar for "hours" should be higher than the bar for "days". 
This study seems to suggest that if you have homework due in two days, you might be more likely to get started on it if you say to yourself, "My homework is due in 48 hours."