背景:诸如Google趋势和Reddit之类的资源提供了评估公众对公共卫生问题的实时兴趣的机会。尽管这些公共可用和免费资源有可能帮助优化公共卫生运动,用于此目的的利用率受到限制。
目的:确定公众对COVID-19的早期认识是否与公众对其他具有公共卫生重要性的传染病的兴趣提高有关。
方法:从2018年到2020年,分析了Google趋势搜索数据和Reddit评论数据中关键字“基孔肯雅”的频率,\"埃博拉病毒\",\"H1N1\",\"MERS\",\"SARS\",和\"Zika\",近几十年来,六种广为人知的流行病。在收集了这六个术语中每个术语的Google趋势相对受欢迎程度得分之后,非配对T检验用于将每个学期的2020年每周得分与其3年研究期间的平均水平进行比较。收集了这六个术语中的每个术语每月的Reddit评论数量,然后根据估计的Reddit每月评论总量进行调整,以得出相对使用量的度量。类似于Google趋势受欢迎程度得分。然后将每个搜索词的评论相对每月发生率与相应的搜索词在COVID之前的每月评论数据进行比较,再次使用不成对T检验。用Bonferroni校正先验地确定用于统计显著性的P值截止值。
结果:GoogleTrends和Reddit数据均显示,至少在大流行的最初几个月内,每个评估的疾病术语的使用都有大幅且统计学上的显着增加。Google搜索和Reddit评论(包括任何经过评估的传染病搜索词)在2020年的头几个月中显著高于其基线使用量。都在2020年3月达到顶峰。谷歌对“SARS”和“MERS”的搜索在整个2020日历年都保持较高,正如Reddit用“埃博拉病毒”一词评论的那样,\"H1N1\",\"MERS\"和\"SARS\"(P<.001,每个每周或每月比较,分别)。
结论:GoogleTrends和Reddit可以很容易地用于评估与公共卫生相关主题的实时普遍兴趣水平。提供一种工具,以更好地安排时间和指导需要接受目标受众的公共卫生举措。COVID-19大流行的开始与公众对其他流行性传染病的兴趣增加有关。我们已经证明,在过去的二十年中,对于流行的六种不同的传染性原因,随着COVID-19的爆发,公共利益大幅迅速上升。我们的数据表明,在最初爆发后的至少几个月里,公众可能特别接受有关这些主题的对话。公共卫生官员应考虑利用Google趋势和社交媒体数据来实时识别与公共卫生主题的参与模式,并优化公共卫生运动的时机。
背景:
BACKGROUND: Resources such as Google Trends and Reddit provide opportunities to gauge real-time popular interest in public health issues. Despite the potential for these publicly available and free resources to help optimize public health campaigns, use for this purpose has been limited.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this
study is to determine whether early public awareness of COVID-19 correlated with elevated public interest in other infectious diseases of public health importance.
METHODS: Google Trends search data and Reddit comment data were analyzed from 2018 through 2020 for the frequency of keywords \"chikungunya,\" \"Ebola,\" \"H1N1,\" \"MERS,\" \"SARS,\" and \"
Zika,\" 6 highly publicized epidemic diseases in recent decades. After collecting Google Trends relative popularity scores for each of these 6 terms, unpaired 2-tailed t tests were used to compare the 2020 weekly scores for each term to their average level over the 3-year
study period. The number of Reddit comments per month with each of these 6 terms was collected and then adjusted for the total estimated Reddit monthly comment volume to derive a measure of relative use, analogous to the Google Trends popularity score. The relative monthly incidence of comments with each search term was then compared to the corresponding search term\'s pre-COVID monthly comment data, again using unpaired 2-tailed t tests. P value cutoffs for statistical significance were determined a priori with a Bonferroni correction.
RESULTS: Google Trends and Reddit data both demonstrate large and statistically significant increases in the usage of each evaluated disease term through at least the initial months of the pandemic. Google searches and Reddit comments that included any of the evaluated infectious disease search terms rose significantly in the first months of 2020 above their baseline usage, peaking in March 2020. Google searches for \"SARS\" and \"MERS\" remained elevated for the entirety of the 2020 calendar year, as did Reddit comments with the words \"Ebola,\" \"H1N1,\" \"MERS,\" and \"SARS\" (P<.001, for each weekly or monthly comparison, respectively).
CONCLUSIONS: Google Trends and Reddit can readily be used to evaluate real-time general interest levels in public health-related topics, providing a tool to better time and direct public health initiatives that require a receptive target audience. The start of the COVID-19 pandemic correlated with increased public interest in other epidemic infectious diseases. We have demonstrated that for 6 distinct infectious causes of epidemics over the last 2 decades, public interest rose substantially and rapidly with the outbreak of COVID-19. Our data suggests that for at least several months after the initial outbreak, the public may have been particularly receptive to dialogue on these topics. Public health officials should consider using Google Trends and social media data to identify patterns of engagement with public health topics in real time and to optimize the timing of public health campaigns.