Benjamin Dowd-Arrow, Ph.D., the Associate Director of the Public Health program, recently co-authored “Political variations in pandemic lifestyles and COVID-19 vaccination by age cohort in the United States,” alongside the Director of the Public Health Program, Amy M Burdette, Ph.D., and Masters in Public Health student Alyssa Smith. The following research summary was written by Shane O’Connor (B.S. Political Science, B.A. History ’24).
Benjamin Dowd-Arrow, Ph.D., co-authored their journal piece “Political variations in pandemic lifestyles and COVID-19 vaccination by age cohort in the United States” to examine the role that politics play in predicting pandemic lifestyle behaviors for older Americans.
Dr. Dowd-Arrow and their colleagues found that Democrats reported less negative pandemic lifestyle behaviors than Republicans or Independents; moreover, Democrats reported higher odds of being vaccinated than both other groups.
“Our results help better our understanding of the ways in which political discourse shapes the adoption of public health interventions,” Dowd-Arrow said. “Specifically, these findings can help inform public health campaigns to address misinformation and vaccine hesitancy through targeted interventions and community-based strategies that account for age and political beliefs.”
The researchers examined the role that politics play in predicting pandemic lifestyle behaviors such as wearing masks consistently, using sanitizer consistently, and avoiding large gatherings for older Americans as well as their choice to be vaccinated.
Using data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey (CHAPS), they built on the Health Lifestyle theory to test whether the impact of political affiliation on risky pandemic health lifestyles and COVID vaccination varies by age cohort. They analyzed the data using two common regression techniques. The models predicting pandemic lifestyle behaviors by political affiliation used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and the models predicting vaccination uptake by political affiliation used binary logistic regression.
Dr. Dowd-Arrow believes that future research should expand on this by examining if these findings persist for other vaccines, such as the Influenza vaccine.
To read the full journal article, click here. To learn more about the Public Health program, visit coss.fsu.edu/publichealth.
APA Citation:
Dowd-Arrow, B., Burdette, A. M., & Smith, A. (2023). Political variations in pandemic lifestyles and covid-19 vaccination by age cohort in the United States. Preventive Medicine, 172, 107525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2023.107525