Stance nouns in COVID-19 related blog posts

Research dissemination through academic blogs creates opportunities for writers to reach wider audiences. With COVID-19, public dissemination of research impacts daily practices, and national and international policies, and in countries like the UK and Spain, The Conversation publishes accessible COVID-19 themed research. Such academic blogs are important to the global academy, yet the role of authorial stance therein is notably under investigated. This paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of "stance nouns + that/de que" in a comparable corpus of English and Spanish COVID-19 themed academic blogs from The Conversation. The analysis identifies similarities and differences across languages that reflect how COVID-19 is framed in each language. For example, Spanish academics use Possibility and Factualness nouns when self-sourcing their stances with expanding strategies, while English academics use Argument and Idea nouns with external sources in contracting strategies. Overall, this paper adds to current linguistic knowledge on academic blogs and scientific communication surrounding COVID-19.

Stance nouns in COVID-19 related blog posts: A contrastive analysis of blog posts published in the Conversation in Spain and the UK

Research dissemination through academic blogs creates opportunities for writers to reach wider audiences. With COVID-19, public dissemination of research impacts daily practices, and national and international policies, and in countries like the UK and Spain, The Conversation publishes accessible COVID-19 themed research. Such academic blogs are important to the global academy, yet the role of authorial stance therein is notably under-investigated. This paper presents a corpus-based contrastive analysis of “stance nouns + that/de que” in a comparable corpus of English and Spanish COVID-19 themed academic blogs from The Conversation. The analysis identifies similarities and differences across languages that reflect how COVID-19 is framed in each language. For example, Spanish academics use Possibility and Factualness nouns when self-sourcing their stances with expanding strategies, while English academics use Argument and Idea nouns with external sources in contracting strategies. Overall, this paper adds to current linguistic knowledge on academic blogs and scientific communication surrounding COVID-19. © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Portuguese version of the COVID-19 perceived risk scale – psychometric study

IntroductionRisk perception of COVID-19 is potentially a significant determinant of the pandemic evolution and the public’s response to it. Acceptable levels of risk perception can be considered good for people to effectively fight the pandemic and adopt preventive health behaviors while high levels of risk perception may be damaging. Recently, Yıldırım&Güler (2020) developed the Covid-19 Perceived Risk Scale (C19PRS) to measure this construct.ObjectivesTo analyze the psychometric properties of the C19PRS Portuguese version, namely construct validity, internal consistency and convergent validity.MethodsA community sample of 234 adults (75.6% women;mean age= 29.53±12.51;range:16-71) completed an on-line survey with the Portuguese versions of the CPRS and the Fear of Covid-19 Scale (FCV-19S;Cabaços et al. 2020). The total sample was randomly divided in two sub-samples: sample A (n=117) was used to perform an exploratory factor analysis/EFA;sample B (n=117) to make a confirmatory factor analysis/CFA.ResultsEFA resulted in three components. CFA revealed that the second-order model with three factors presented good fit indexes (X2/df=1.471;CFI=.959;GFI=.948;TLI=.932;p[RMSEA≤.01]=.065). CPRS Cronbach alphas was α=.687;for F1 Worry, F2 Susceptibility to Covid-19 and F3 Susceptibility to Overall Morbimortality were α=.747, α=.813 and α=.543, respectively. The total and dimensional scores significantly correlated with FCV-19S (r>.30, p<.01).ConclusionsThis study provides evidence for the validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of CPRS, which will be used in an ongoing research project on the relationship between Covid-19 perceived risk, perfectionism, cognitive processes and adherence to public health measures to contain the pandemic.

Portuguese version of the fear of COVID-19 scale – psychometric study

IntroductionMore than in other conditions, fear is associated with infectious diseases, and is directly associated with its transmission rate, morbidity and mortality. High levels of fear can affect the individual’s ability to think clearly, react proportionately and make rational decisions in the context of COVID-19. Recently, Mertens et al. (2020) developed the Fear of Covid-19 Scale (FCV-19S) to measure this construct.ObjectivesTo analyse the psychometric properties of the FCV-19S Portuguese version, namely construct validity, internal consistency and convergent validity.MethodsA community sample of 234 adults (75.6% women;mean age= 29.53±12.51;range:16-71) completed an on-line survey with the Portuguese versions of the FCV-19S, the Covid-19 Perceived Risk Scale (CPRS) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21).The total sample was randomly divided in two sub-samples: sample A (n=117) was used to perform an exploratory factor analysis/EFA;sample B (n=117) to make a confirmatory factor analysis/CFA.ResultsEFA resulted in one component. CFA revealed that the unifactorial model presented acceptable fit indexes (X2/df=3.291;CFI=.977;GFI=.932;TLI=.919;p[RMSEA≤.01]=.091). Cronbach alpha was α=.855. The total score significantly correlated with Covid-19 Perceived Risk (r=.529, p<.01) and with anxiety from DASS-21 (r=.132, p<.05).ConclusionsThis study provides preliminary evidence for the validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of FCV-19S, which will be used in an ongoing research project on the relationship between fear of Covid-19, personality, cognitive processes and adherence to public health measures to contain the pandemic.