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OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT04644328

The Doctors for Coronavirus Prevention Project Thanksgiving / Christmas Messaging Campaign

Facebook ads with physician-delivered videos were shown before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and focused on staying safe during the COVID pandemic by limiting travel and mask-wearing.

Completed

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Key information

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

JPAL North America

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, United States

About this study

The investigators used Facebook ads to show a 20 second video clip recorded by Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard and Lynn Community health center doctors (6 people in all) to approximately 20,000,000 Facebook users. The ads will be shown before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday and will focus on staying safe - limiting travel and mask-wearing. The investigators will randomize exposure to the ad campaign at the ZIP code or county level to ask:

Do the videos change mobility and Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel? Do they reduce the spread of COVID-19?

Are there spillover impacts from the video messages? For example, if individuals decide to stay home, then do the geographical regions that tend to be visited by people from treated areas experience any effects, either through information spillovers or through a reduction in travel?

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • Individuals viewing the ads must be Facebook users, 18 years and older. Facebook will decide specifically which users receive the messages within a target geographical area (zip or county).

Exclusion criteria

-

Treatment and study plan

Facebook Ads on the importance of staying safe during the Thanksgiving / Christmas holiday

Behavioral

Facebook ads to show a 15 second video clip recorded by MGH, Harvard and Lynn Community health center and other health care professionals. The ads will be shown before the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday and will focus on staying safe - limiting travel and mask-wearing. The investigators will randomize exposure to the ad campaign at the ZIP code or county level.

Primary outcomes

  1. Facebook Movement Metric

    Time frame: November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving); December 24-25, 2020 (Christmas); February 2-29, 2020 (Baseline benchmark)

    The change in movement metric is the percent change in distance covered in a day compared to the same day of the week in the benchmark period of February 2-29, 2020, by people who started the day in a particular location. We define holiday travel as travel during the three days preceding each holiday, since the available data does not allow us to compute the impact of the intervention on the return travel (after the holiday). The reason is that the mobility data describes the behavior throughout the day, for people who were in each county that morning. Since the campaign was targeted based on home location, we can only capture its impact on travel away from home, not back home.

  2. Percentage Leaving Home on Day of Holiday

    Time frame: November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving); December 24-25, 2020 (Christmas)

    The Facebook stay put metric is the percentage of people who stay within a small geographical area (a "tile" of 600m*600m in which they started the day). We use it to compute the share of people leaving home on the day of the holiday (i.e. this variable = 1 - stay put on the day of the holiday).

  3. Inverse Hyperbolic Sine of COVID-19 Cases

    Time frame: December 1-14 (Thanksgiving arms) and January 1-14 (Christmas arms)

    Inverse hyperbolic sine of COVID-19 cases during a 14 day period starting 5 days after each holiday

Secondary outcomes

  1. Knowledge of COVID-19 Prevention Message (Recall of ad, Intent to Travel, Mask Wearing and Beliefs About Travel)

    Time frame: up to one month

    Facebook will ask a set of users in treated zip codes to answer four survey questions (each user answers only one question each). A small within-zip control group will be held from being treated, enabling comparisons between those who see the videos and those who don't. These questions will be asked a few days after the ad is shown on the User's feed and will include 1) recall of the ad; 2) intention of traveling over holiday; 3) intention of wearing a mask; and 4) beliefs about whether people should travel over holiday.

  2. Average Number of Tiles People Occupy (Mobility Measure)

    Time frame: up to one month

    this measures each day "how much people move around by counting the number of level-16 Bing tiles they are seen in within a day. People seen in more tiles are probably moving around more, while people seen in fewer are probably moving around less. Each day take eligible people in a given region and compute the number of distinct tiles they were seen in." This is aggregated to the county level.

  3. Percentage of Eligible Participants Only Observed in a Single Level-16 Bing Tile (no Change in Movement)

    Time frame: up to one month

    Facebook "Stay-put" data: this measures each day "the percentage of eligible people who are only observed in a single level-16 Bing tile (600m x 600m) during the course of a day" aggregated to they county level.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Other

Collaborators

  • Harvard University
  • Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Stanford University
  • Yale University

Registry information

Important dates

Study start
2020
Primary completion
2021
Study completion
2021
First posted
Nov 25, 2020
Registry last updated
Dec 21, 2021

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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