In the current COVID-19 crisis, developing effective means of educating children about disease transmission is a matter of vital concern, not only for scientific literacy, but also for public health. Children play an important role in the transmission of contagious illness, given how frequently they engage in risky behaviors such as touching their faces or making physical contact with caregivers. Public health recommendations include teaching best practice to children to reduce disease spread, but prior research shows that children are unlikely to engage in these practices without a firm understanding of the underlying process of disease transmission. This RAPID award to a team of researchers at the University of Michigan will assess what children know, what they don't know, and what they think they know (but is scientifically inaccurate) about the transmission of COVID-19. In conducting a comprehensive assessment with children aged 5-12 years and their parents, the researchers will address such questions as: At what ages do children understand aspects of viral transmission that are non-obvious or invisible, such as asymptomatic carriers, or the potential for objects and surfaces to carry infection? At what ages can children go beyond isolated facts they have learned to figure out what to do in new situations? How is children's biological reasoning influenced by non-biological factors, such whether a potential carrier is a friend or a stranger? How does children's reasoning about a pandemic that has already massively disrupted their daily lives (COVID-19) compare with their reasoning about a more ordinary and innocuous illness (the common cold)? Findings from the project will inform parents, educators, researchers, and public health professionals about children's understanding of the transmission of disease in general, and COVID-19 in particular. It will lay the foundation for the rapid development of evidence-based educational interventions that target gaps and misconceptions in children’s understanding, thereby improving both scientific literacy and adherence to public health guidelines. This RAPID award is made by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program in DRL, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. ECR supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning.
The research team will interview children age 5-12 years and their parents, employing a battery of measures to assess children's understanding of the biological processes of viral transmission, comparing COVID-19 with the common cold. Study 1 will address children's understanding of how and why viruses work and spread, with a battery of child-friendly tasks that assess: incubation periods (lag between infection and disease onset), asymptomatic hosts, that viruses can survive on a surface or object (such as a doorknob), and that viruses can gain access to the body through the eyes, nose, and mouth. Study 2 will focus on who may contract, transmit, or suffer the consequences of viral disease, and the role of both biological and non-biological factors (such as a person's nationality, language, or familiarity) in these judgments. For example, children will receive a series of vignettes, each involving two hypothetical characters of different social identities, where disease transmission is a possibility, and will be asked to assess the likelihood that the character will contract the illness, how sick the character will get, and whether or not the character will transmit the illness to another person. While in-person contact is restricted, children will be interviewed via face-to-face remote video and a Qualtrics survey link sent to the parent/guardian. Interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and coded. Intercorrelations among children's performance across the different tasks will assess whether understanding consists of piecemeal facts as opposed to coherent understandings. Determining children's understanding of disease transmission during this global pandemic provides an unprecedented opportunity to identify gaps and misconceptions in children's understanding of viral transmission, to provide a foundation for developing effective educational programming about biology in the elementary and middle school years. It will also be a source of theoretically significant data of central interest to STEM education regarding the coherence of children's biological theories over developmental time, and how children's informal biological theories may shift in the context of an ongoing health crisis. The project will provide a foundation for improving biological education, as well as for public health and children's understanding of and reactions to illness in others.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
