An article co-authored by Sun Kyong Lee, Ph.D., an associate professor at Korea University, OU graduate student Juhyung Sun, Rachel Jang, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, and Shane Connelly, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Community and Society Transformation, co-director of the Center for Applied Social Research and professor of psychology in the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, was recently named a Top 100 Article of 2022 by Scientific Reports.
With 12,765 downloads, the article, “Misinformation of COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine hesitancy,” earned a Top 100 ranking out of nearly 22,000 articles published by the outlet.
“This interdisciplinary research collaboration was one of several that resulted from seed grants from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships and the Data Institute for Societal Challenges and increases our understanding of the COVID-19 vaccine misinformation landscape,” Connelly said. “Our team really enjoyed working on this project.”
In the article, Connelly and her fellow researchers surveyed full-time working professionals and U.S. college students to determine their exposure to COVID-19 misinformation, knowledge about the vaccines, their associations with vaccine hesitancy and their intentions of getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
The research results published in the article revealed that 57.6% of full-time working professionals reported being exposed to conspiratorial misinformation such as COVID-19 vaccines are harmful and dangerous. Additionally, they determined that U.S. college students with little knowledge about the vaccine were more likely to be vaccine hesitant and less likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
