A Letter from the Institute for Public Relations Team
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Dear Research Letter Subscribers,
As of this week, the IPR weekly Research Letter will return to publication once a week.
While we are returning to the once weekly Research Letter, we will continue to provide the latest insights into current events regarding COVID-19, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and more.
Thank you!
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Some Companies Actually Do See Financial Returns on Their Social Investments: Here's What They Have in Common
Kyle Welch, DBA, The George Washington University, & Aaron Yoon, DBA, Northwestern University
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Kyle Welch, DBA, and Aaron Yoon, DBA, explore the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment and employee satisfaction on shareholder value. As more companies invest in programs for social purposes, executives should be aware of how these programs impact their bottom line.
Researchers first scored publicly traded companies on ESG practices, as well as on their levels of employee satisfaction. Data on firm ESG performance was collected from MSCI ESG Ratings and employee satisfaction scores were obtained from Glassdoor.com. This data was then measured against the companies' financial portfolios.
Key findings include:
- Firms with high ESG performance and employee satisfaction significantly outperformed portfolios of firms with low ratings on both topics by 5.61%.
- The portfolio of firms with high ESG performance and employee satisfaction outperform the firms with low ESG performance and high employee satisfaction by 2.75%.
- Firms with high ESG performance and employee satisfaction also outperformed the firms with high ESG performance and low employee satisfaction by 5.64%.
- These findings suggest that ESG coupled with employee satisfaction predicts future stock returns and enhances shareholder value.
Read more about how investment in ESG programs and employee satisfaction impact financial performance.
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Positively Framed Risk Information in Patient Information Leaflets Reduces Side Effect Reporting
Rebecca Webster, MSc, John Weinman, Ph.D., & James Rubin, Ph.D., King's College London
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Rebecca Webster, MSc, John Weinman, Ph.D., and James Rubin, Ph.D., examined if framing can reduce nocebo-induced side effects (detrimental effect caused by a patient’s negative expectations of a treatment) and whether the framing messaging would impact people’s perceptions of its credibility or satisfaction.
203 healthy adults read patient information leaflets about a drug they thought they were testing before consuming a tablet and then reporting any side effects within an hour. The tablet was not an actual drug and had no physiological effects. Half of the participants saw a leaflet with the side effects framed as the likelihood of them occurring (i.e., 1 in 10 people will be affected), which acts as negative framing, while the other half of the participants saw a leaflet with the side effects framed as the likelihood of them not occurring (i.e. 90% of people will not be affected), which is the positive framing.
Some key findings include:
- Participants who saw the positively framed leaflet were 34% less likely to report experiencing the side effects described in the leaflets.
- 55% of participants exposed to negatively framed information attributed symptoms to the tablet, while only 39% of positively framed participants did.
- There was no difference between the two groups when it came to ratings of the leaflets’ credibility or patients’ satisfaction with the information.
Read more to learn how message framing impacts patients' experiences and side effect reporting.
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A Digital Media Literacy Intervention Increases Discernment Between Mainstream and False News in the United States and India
Andrew M. Guess, Ph.D., Princeton University; Michael Lerner, University of Michigan; Benjamin Lyons, Ph.D., University of Utah, and colleagues
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Dr. Andrew Guess and colleagues assessed the effectiveness of an intervention used to teach people how to spot false news throughout 14 countries. A global deficit in digital media literacy has been identified as a critical factor explaining widespread belief in online misinformation.
Researchers used data from preregistered survey experiments conducted around recent elections in the United States and India.
Key findings from the study include:
- Participants' ability to distinguish between mainstream and false news stories was improved by 27% after viewing the media literacy intervention.
- The proportion of respondents rating a false headline as “very accurate” or “somewhat accurate” decreased from 32% in the control condition to 24% among respondents who were assigned to the media literacy intervention.
- The intervention reduced the proportion of people endorsing false headlines as "accurate" from 33% to 29%.
Read more to learn how the effectiveness of a digital media literacy intervention impacts individuals' ability to discern mainstream news from false news.
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Most Americans Say They Regularly Wore a Mask in Stores in the Past Month — Fewer See Others Doing It
Ruth Igielnik, Pew Research Center
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A recent
Pew Research Center Survey
examined Americans’ personal mask-wearing behavior and the mask-wearing behavior they observe in their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The data of 9,654 U.S. adults was collected as a part of a larger survey conducted June 4-10, 2020.
Some key findings include:
- 65% of U.S. adults say that they have personally worn a mask in stores or other businesses "all" or "most of the time" in the past month, while 15% say they did this "some of the time" (see image).
- 80% of Asian adults, 74% of Hispanic adults, and 69% of Black adults say they wore a mask in stores or other businesses "all" or "most of the time" in the past month, compared to 62% of White adults.
- College graduates are more likely to report having worn a mask "all" or "most of the time" (76%) than those without a college degree (60%). This education gap spans racial groups.
- 79% of college-educated Black adults say they wore a mask "all" or "most of the time" in the past month, compared with 67% of Black adults with some college or less.
- 85% of Hispanic college graduates report having regularly worn masks vs. 72% of less-educated Hispanic adults.
- 74% of those aged 65 and older say they have worn a mask "all" or "most of the time" in the past month, compared with 66% of those aged 50 to 64, 61% of those 30 to 49, and 62% 18 to 29.
Read more to discover the full findings of this study and how wearing a mask in public spaces differs among demographic groups.
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Perceptions of COVID-19 Fatality Juxtaposed to the Seasonal Flu
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, and Dolores Albarracin, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
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This abstract is summarized by IPR from the
original journal article
published in The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
Note: This survey was conducted before the WHO classified COVID-19 as a pandemic.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Ph.D., and Dolores Albarracin, Ph.D. examined how accurately the public perceived the relative lethality of the seasonal flu and COVID-19. Researchers also assessed the association between the use of various media channels, political beliefs, and misperceptions about COVID-19.
The researchers fielded a US national probability phone survey of 1,008 respondents between March 3 and March 8, 2020.
Some key findings from this research include:
- 19% reported believing that some individuals in the CDC are exaggerating the seriousness of COVID-19 to undermine the Trump presidency.
- Republicans were more likely to believe that the CDC was exaggerating the threat of COVID-19 to hurt President Donald Trump.
- Democrats were more likely than Republicans to know that COVID-19 is more lethal than the flu.
- 23% of respondents rated “probably true” or “definitely true” to the notion that COVID-19 was created by the Chinese as a bioweapon.
- Although 39% knew that a person with COVID-19 was more likely to die as a result than was a person who was diagnosed with the seasonal flu, 38% thought that one disease was as likely as the other to result in death, 13% considered the seasonal flu more deadly, and 8% said “it depends.”
- Exposure to sources such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube was positively correlated with the belief in the efficacy of vitamin C, the belief that the CDC was exaggerating the threat to harm President Trump, and the belief that the virus was created by the US government (see image).
Read more to learn the full findings of the study and how the perceptions of COVID-19 vary between political parties.
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