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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Devashish RayORCiD, Raenhha Dhami, Dr Jan Lecouturier, Dr Laura McGowanORCiD, Aritra MukherjeeORCiD, Professor Falko Sniehotta
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2024. During the COVID-19 pandemic, lateral flow tests (LFTs) were used to regulate access to work, education, social activities, and travel. However, falsification of home LFT results was a concern. Falsification of test results during an ongoing pandemic is a sensitive issue. Consequently, respondents may not answer truthfully to questions about LFT falsification behaviours (FBs) when asked directly. Indirect questioning techniques such as the Extended Crosswise model (ECWM) can provide more reliable prevalence estimates of sensitive behaviors than direct questioning. Here we report the prevalence of LFT FBs in a representative sample in England (n = 1577) using direct questioning (DQ) and the ECWM. We examine the role of demographic and psychological variables as predictors of LFT FBs. We show that the prevalence estimates of the FBs in the DQ condition were significantly lower than the ECWM estimates, e.g., reporting a negative result without conducting a test: 5.7% DQ vs 18.4% ECWM. Moral norms, subjective norms, anticipated regret, perception of risk to self, and trust in government predicted some of the FBs. Indirect questioning techniques can help provide more realistic and higher quality data about compliance with behavioural regulations to government and public health agencies.
Author(s): Ray D, Dhami R, Lecouturier J, McGowan LJ, Mukherjee A, Vlaev I, Kelly MP, Sniehotta FF
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Scientific Reports
Year: 2024
Volume: 14
Online publication date: 09/02/2024
Acceptance date: 31/01/2024
Date deposited: 27/02/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2045-2322
Publisher: Springer Nature
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-53383-8
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53383-8
Data Access Statement: The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Study materials and outputs are available at https://osf.io/2kcuw/
PubMed id: 38336852
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