Using machine learning to identify important predictors of COVID-19 infection prevention behaviors during the early phase of the pandemic

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Caspar J. Van Lissa
  • Ben Gützkow
  • Michelle R. vanDellen
  • Arobindu Dash
  • Tim Draws
  • Wolfgang Stroebe
  • N. Pontus Leander
  • Maximilian Agostini
  • Andrii Grygoryshyn
  • Jannis Kreienkamp
  • Clara S. Vetter
  • Georgios Abakoumkin
  • Jamilah Hanum Abdul Khaiyom
  • Vjollca Ahmedi
  • Handan Akkas
  • Carlos A. Almenara
  • Mohsin Atta
  • Sabahat Cigdem Bagci
  • Sima Basel
  • Edona Berisha Kida
  • And 85 others
  • Allan B.I. Bernardo
  • Nicholas R. Buttrick
  • Phatthanakit Chobthamkit
  • Hoon Seok Choi
  • Mioara Cristea
  • Sára Csaba
  • Kaja Damnjanović
  • Ivan Danyliuk
  • Daniela Di Santo
  • Karen M. Douglas
  • Violeta Enea
  • Daiane G. Faller
  • Gavan Fitzsimons
  • Alexandra Gheorghiu
  • Ángel Gómez
  • Ali Hamaidia
  • Qing Han
  • Mai Helmy
  • Joevarian Hudiyana
  • Bertus F. Jeronimus
  • Ding Yu Jiang
  • Veljko Jovanović
  • Željka Kamenov
  • Anna Kende
  • Shian Ling Keng
  • Tra Thi Thanh Kieu
  • Yasin Koc
  • Kamila Kovyazina
  • Inna Kozytska
  • Joshua Krause
  • Arie W. Kruglanksi
  • Anton Kurapov
  • Maja Kutlaca
  • Nóra Anna Lantos
  • Edward P. Lemay
  • Cokorda Bagus Jaya Lesmana
  • Winnifred R. Louis
  • Adrian Lueders
  • Najma Iqbal Malik
  • Anton Martinez
  • Kira O. McCabe
  • Jasmina Mehulić
  • Mirra Noor Milla
  • Idris Mohammed
  • Erica Molinario
  • Manuel Moyano
  • Hayat Muhammad
  • Silvana Mula
  • Hamdi Muluk
  • Solomiia Myroniuk
  • Reza Najafi
  • Claudia F. Nisa
  • Boglárka Nyúl
  • Paul A. O’Keefe
  • Jose Javier Olivas Osuna
  • Evgeny N. Osin
  • Joonha Park
  • Gennaro Pica
  • Antonio Pierro
  • Jonas H. Rees
  • Anne Margit Reitsema
  • Elena Resta
  • Marika Rullo
  • Michelle K. Ryan
  • Adil Samekin
  • Pekka Santtila
  • Edyta M. Sasin
  • Birga M. Schumpe
  • Heyla A. Selim
  • Michael Vicente Stanton
  • Samiah Sultana
  • Robbie M. Sutton
  • Eleftheria Tseliou
  • Akira Utsugi
  • Jolien Anne van Breen
  • Kees Van Veen
  • Alexandra Vázquez
  • Robin Wollast
  • Victoria Wai lan Yeung
  • Somayeh Zand
  • Iris Lav Žeželj
  • Bang Zheng
  • Andreas Zick
  • Claudia Zúñiga
  • Jocelyn J. Bélanger

Before vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became available, a set of infection-prevention behaviors constituted the primary means to mitigate the virus spread. Our study aimed to identify important predictors of this set of behaviors. Whereas social and health psychological theories suggest a limited set of predictors, machine-learning analyses can identify correlates from a larger pool of candidate predictors. We used random forests to rank 115 candidate correlates of infection-prevention behavior in 56,072 participants across 28 countries, administered in March to May 2020. The machine-learning model predicted 52% of the variance in infection-prevention behavior in a separate test sample—exceeding the performance of psychological models of health behavior. Results indicated the two most important predictors related to individual-level injunctive norms. Illustrating how data-driven methods can complement theory, some of the most important predictors were not derived from theories of health behavior—and some theoretically derived predictors were relatively unimportant.

Original languageEnglish
Article number100482
JournalPatterns
Volume3
Issue number4
Number of pages14
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 08.04.2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)

    Research areas

  • COVID-19, Economic burden, Health behaviors, Infection risk, random forest, social norms, DSML2: Proof-of-concept: Data science output has been formulated, implemented, and tested for one domain/problem, machine learning, public goods dilemma, health behaviors
  • Health sciences

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Corporate Volunteering – theoretische Überlegungen, empirische Befunde und eine aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion
  2. Die Entwicklung von Vorstellungen zu Klimawandel und Naturkatastrophen in der Öffentlichkeit - konzeptionelle und methodische Überlegungen
  3. Investigation of the utilization of oat pomace and acid whey in technical scale succinic acid fermentation including downstream processing
  4. THE SOVIET-UNION UNDERGOING RADICAL CHANGE - HISTORICAL BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVES AND LIMITS OF THE REFORM POLICY OF GORBACHEV - GERMAN - MEISSNER,B
  5. Online-based survey on health literacy and health situation of school principals and vice principals in Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic
  6. New descriptions and typifications of syntaxa within the project 'Plant communities of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and their vulnerability' - Part I
  7. New descriptions and typifications of syntaxa within the project 'Plant communities of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and their vulnerability' - Part II
  8. Analytische und dynamische problemlösekompetenz im lichte internationaler schulleistungsvergleichsstudien untersuchungen zur dimensionalität
  9. An IAD framework analysis of minigrid institutions for sustainable rural electrification in East Africa
  10. Requirements engineering for an industrial symbiosis tool for industrial parks covering system analysis, transformation simulation and goal setting
  11. The struggles of Malaysian media and environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) in communicating the environment within semi-democratic nation
  12. Altersetin, a new antibiotic from cultures of endophytic Alternaria spp. taxonomy, fermentation, isolation, structure elucidation and biological activities
  13. Using cross-recurrence quantification analysis to compute similarity measures for time series of unequal length with applications to sleep stage analysis
  14. Das erste Urteil des Afrikanischen Gerichtshofs für Menschen- und Völker-rechte – zugleich eine Einführung in die Funktionen und Arbeitsweisen des Gerichtshofs
  15. Double-Click on London - Fünf Webunits zu den Themen "London Transport", "Jack the Ripper", "Cockney", "Pubs and Drugs" und "Studying in London" für die gymnasiale Oberstufe
  16. Abschlussbericht: Auftreten und Verbleib von ausgewählten pharmazeutischen Wirkstoffen und Desinfektionsmitteln und deren Metaboliten in der aquatischen Umwelt