Exploring factors predicting scientists’ intentions to participate in crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study adopted a questionnaire design. We commissioned two leading WeChat public accounts (social media-based media outlets) that primarily target scientists – iScientist (WeChat ID: IamaScientist) and Fanpu (the Chinese name of the public account, which can be literally translated to “Returning to theoretical purity”, WeChat ID: fanpu2019) – to distribute the online questionnaire from February 19, 2020, when China was still suffering COVID-19 and the pandemic was beginning to spread in other places around the world. Public accounts on WeChat are social media channels that are widely adopted across China. With 1.112 billion monthly active users in the first quarter of 2019, WeChat is China's largest social media platform(Statista, 2020). Both iScientist and Fanpu had more than 100,000 subscribers on WeChat, mainly scientists, engineers, and doctoral students. The advertisement for the survey and the link to the questionnaire were posted in Chinese by the two publications and distributed in iScientist’s weekly E-newsletters among its registered readers (Fanpu didn’t provide E-newsletters), with the title highlighting that the survey focused on scientists’ communication behaviors. The questionnaire was distributed through both Qualtrics.com, an international survey platform (used initially out of concern about potential censorship in China at the onset of the pandemic), and Wjx.cn, a leading Chinese survey site. Data from the two platforms were combined into a single sample. The survey was anonymous, and the introduction clearly stated that participation was voluntary, that completion of the survey implied consent, and that respondents could withdraw at any time. Respondents who completed the questionnaire were offered a complimentary electronic book on science communication skills. The survey remained open for four weeks and was closed after sufficient data had been collected (856 completed questionnaires). We first excluded respondents who spent too little time completing the survey (≤300 seconds), and obtained a total of 802 valid questionnaires. Although the survey invitation specified that we were recruiting scientists—referring, in the Chinese context, primarily to natural science researchers—some ineligible participants still responded. We therefore screened out humanities and social science researchers, as well as non-research professionals (e.g., executives at research institutions), who numbered 44, accounting for about 5.5% of valid respondents, because their perspectives on emergency communication may differ substantially from those of natural scientists. The final dataset included 758 valid responses, with over 300 collected via Qualtrics.com and more than 450 via Wjx.cn. The questionnaire is detailed in the Supplementary material.本研究采用问卷调研设计。我们委托两家主要面向科研人员的头部微信公众号——iScientist（微信号：IamaScientist）与返朴（Fanpu，公众号中文名可直译为“回归理论纯粹性”，微信号：fanpu2019）——于2020年2月19日投放线上问卷。彼时中国仍处于新冠疫情防控阶段，疫情已开始在全球其他地区蔓延。微信公众号是中国国内广泛使用的社交媒体渠道，据Statista 2020年数据，2019年第一季度微信的月活跃用户达11.12亿，为中国规模最大的社交媒体平台。iScientist与返朴的微信公众号均拥有超10万订阅用户，主体为科研人员、工程师与博士生。 两家公众号以中文发布了调研招募启事与问卷链接，其中iScientist还将相关内容通过其每周电子简报发送给注册读者（返朴未提供电子简报服务），招募标题突出本次调研聚焦科研人员的传播行为。问卷通过国际调研平台Qualtrics.com（疫情初期因担忧中国境内潜在的内容审查风险而选用）与国内头部调研平台问卷星（Wjx.cn）同步投放。来自两个平台的数据被合并为单一样本。本次调研为匿名调研，开篇明确说明参与为自愿行为，完成问卷即代表同意参与，且受访者可随时终止参与。完成问卷的受访者将获赠一本关于科学传播技能的免费电子书。调研持续开放四周，在收集到足够样本量（856份有效完成问卷）后结束。 我们首先剔除了作答时长过短（≤300秒）的受访者，最终得到802份有效问卷。尽管调研招募说明中明确要求招募科研人员——在中国语境下主要指自然科学研究者——仍有部分不符合条件的参与者提交了问卷。因此我们进一步筛除了人文社科研究者与非科研从业者（如科研机构管理人员），共计44人，占有效受访者的约5.5%，原因在于其对应急传播的认知视角与自然科学家存在显著差异。最终数据集共包含758份有效回复，其中超300份来自Qualtrics.com，超过450份来自问卷星。本调研的问卷详情见补充材料。