Behavior, Risk Perception and Misinformation Monitoring Tool: Adaptation of the WHO Approach to the Ukrainian Context

Abstract

Risk communication is a process aimed at supporting stakeholders in identifying threats, assessing vulnerabilities and promoting collective resilience. According to WHO recommendations, one of the priority directions for improvement of Ukraine’s emergency response capabilities is the forming and/or implementation of a system for collecting and analyzing information on risk perception, behavior and misinformation, problems and fears of society. The objective: to determine the validity and reliability of the developed Behavior, Risk Perception and Misinformation Monitoring Tool, which was created on the basis of WHO Europe’s Behavioral Insights tool. Materials and methods. The analyzed cohort of 56 adults living in different regions of Ukraine differ in gender, level of education, and field of activity. At the initial stage (T1), risk perception, behavior and misinformation were assessed. A repeat survey (T2) was conducted after 17 days to determine the reliability of the proposed Tool. Results. The Tool demonstrated adequate or high reliability in most of the proposed questions (ICC ≥ 0.6). Some questions that did not meet the established reliability criteria (ISS < 0.4) were excluded from the final version of the questionnaire. The shortened version of the questionnaire contains 131 questions. Conclusions. Given that in each block of questions, most of them were found to be reliable, and the deletions did not affect the structure and main purpose of the questionnaire, the Behavior, Risk Perception and Misinformation Monitoring Tool has potential for use in health care practice as a means of assessing behavioral risk perception and misinformation of the adult population. Systemic monitoring of behavioral variables is an important component of building Ukraine’s emergency response capabilities, which becomes especially important in wartime.