Download Say Something Nice Anyway –Healthcare - Mturk – 1

Say Something Nice Anyway –Healthcare - Mturk – 1 (#725)
Author(s)
Emma Levine (Wharton) - [email protected]
Created:
05/31/2016
Made public: 08/30/2016
1) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study?
I hypothesize that communicators will penalize lies of commission (relative to lies of omission) more than targets will. That is, I expect an interaction
between perspective (communicator/target) and communication tactic (omission/commission) on the perceived acceptability and the perceived
beneficence of lying.
This study will examine this proposed asymmetry within the context of healthcare communication and will feature hypothetical conversations
between patients and doctors.
2) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured.
Participants will judge the 1) acceptability and 2) beneficence of each communication tactic.
Acceptability will be measured with 3 questions (measured on 7-point bipolar scales):
• How ethical is this behavior? (1) Completely unethical to (7) Completely ethical
• How moral is this behavior? (1) Completely immoral to (7) Completely moral
• I would want my doctor to behave this way/I would behave this way. (1) Strongly disagree to (7) strongly agree
Beneficence (the belief that the lie helps the target) will be measured with four questions (all measured on 7-point scales anchored at strongly
disagree and strongly agree).
• This behavior would spare me (the patient) from fear and anxiety.
• This behavior would promote my (the patient’s) well-being.
• This behavior would improve my (the patient’s) quality of life.
• This behavior could actually improve my (the patient’s) health outcomes.
3) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to?
Each participant will be randomly assigned to one condition from a 2(Omission/Commission) x 2(Communicator/Target) x 4(Stimulus sampling)
design.
The four stimuli are different vignettes that feature difficult conversations (between doctor-communicators and patient-targets) pertaining to cancer
care.
4) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis.
I will run two-way ANOVAs with Perspective and Communication tactic as factors, on perceived acceptability and perceived beneficence. I will run
these analyses with and without stimulus as a covariate. I am not expecting controlling for stimulus to alter the results.
5) Any secondary analyses?
I will compute scale reliabilities (alphas) for my two measures. These items loaded together in factor analyses in prior studies. I may conduct
exploratory factor analyses as well, to confirm the two-factor solution.
I will also collect exploratory measures regarding participants’ own experience as healthcare providers and as patients, and will examine if there are
any correlations between these variables and responses.
6) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the
number will be determined.
I will collect data from 800 Mechanical Turk participants.
7) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., data exclusions, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?)
8) Have any data been collected for this study already?
No, no data have been collected for this study yet
Version of AsPredicted Questions: 1.05
Available at https://AsPredicted.org/8cgux.pdf
(Permanently archived at http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://AsPredicted.org/8cgux.pdf)