Internet Use for Obtaining Medicine Information: Cross-sectional Survey.

BACKGROUND: The internet is increasingly being used as a source of medicine-related information. People want information to facilitate decision-making and self-management, and they tend to prefer the internet for ease of access. However, it is widely acknowledged that the quality of web-based information varies. Poor interpretation of medicine information can lead to anxiety and poor adherence to drug therapy. It is therefore important to understand how people search, select, and trust medicine information. OBJECTIVE: The objectives of this study were to establish the extent of internet use for seeking medicine information among Norwegian pharmacy customers, analyze factors associated with internet use, and investigate the level of trust in different sources and websites. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of pharmacy customers recruited from all but one community pharmacy in Tromsø, a medium size municipality in Norway (77,000 inhabitants). Persons (aged ≥16 years) able to complete a questionnaire in Norwegian were asked to participate in the study. The recruitment took place in September and October 2020. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, social media was also used to recruit medicine users. RESULTS: A total of 303 respondents reported which sources they used to obtain information about their medicines (both prescription and over the counter) and to what extent they trusted these sources. A total of 125 (41.3%) respondents used the internet for medicine information, and the only factor associated with internet use was age. The odds of using the internet declined by 5% per year of age (odds ratio 0.95, 95% CI 0.94-0.97; P=.048). We found no association between internet use and gender, level of education, or regular medicine use. The main purpose reported for using the internet was to obtain information about side effects. Other main sources of medicine information were physicians (n=191, 63%), pharmacy personnel (n=142, 47%), and medication package leaflets (n=124, 42%), while 36 (12%) respondents did not obtain medicine information from any sources. Note that 272 (91%) respondents trusted health professionals as a source of medicine information, whereas 58 (46%) respondents who used the internet trusted the information they found on the internet. The most reliable websites were the national health portals and other official health information sites. CONCLUSIONS: Norwegian pharmacy customers use the internet as a source of medicine information, but most still obtain medicine information from health professionals and packet leaflets. People are aware of the potential for misinformation on websites, and they mainly trust high-quality sites run by health authorities.

Health misinformation and freedom of expression: considerations for policymakers.

Health misinformation, most visibly following the COVID-19 infodemic, is an urgent threat that hinders the success of public health policies. It likely contributed, and will continue to contribute, to avoidable deaths. Policymakers around the world are being pushed to tackle this problem. Legislative acts have been rolled out or announced in many countries and at the European Union level. The goal of this paper is not to review particular legislative initiatives, or to assess the impact and efficacy of measures implemented by digital intermediaries, but to reflect on the high constitutional and ethical stakes involved in tackling health misinformation through speech regulation. Our findings suggest that solutions focused on regulating speech are likely to encounter significant constraints, as policymakers grasp with the limitations imposed by freedom of expression and ethical considerations. Solutions focused on empowering individuals - such as media literacy initiatives, fact-checking or credibility labels - are one way to avoid such hurdles.

Inflation Expectations, Inflation Target Credibility, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Germany.

Using the exact wording of the European Central Bank's definition of price stability, we started a representative online survey of German citizens in January 2019 that is designed to measure long-term inflation expectations and the credibility of the inflation target. Our results indicate that credibility has decreased in our sample period, particularly in the course of the deep recession implied by the Covid-19 pandemic. Interestingly, even though inflation rates in Germany have been clearly below 2% for several years, credibility has declined mainly because Germans increasingly expect that inflation will be much higher than 2% over the medium term. We investigate how inflation expectations and the impact of the pandemic depend on personal characteristics including age, gender, education, and political attitude.

Beyond p < .05: a critical review of new Bayesian proposals for assessing the p-value.

This paper reviews recent contributions from a Bayesian-oriented perspective, after the ASA statement on p-values (2016). We classify proposals that (i) supplement the p-value; (ii) modify the p-value itself. In the first group, we review the Bayes factor, the False Positive risk, the rejection odds and the analysis of credibility from both Matthews' and Held's point of view. We also put forth and discuss a new index of credibility, about which we conduct a delimited simulation study. In the second group, we discuss Gannon's modification of the p-value based on the Bayes factor and the second-generation p-value. The theory is illustrated with two case studies on pharmacotherapy in infectious diseases. Contemporary authors still refer to the p-value as a statistical indicator but have abandoned the perspective of evaluating p-values with fixed thresholds. Statistical societies worldwide should target new strategies to disseminate the debate on p-values in all applied fields of knowledge, as well as they may promote the use of different statistical procedures to supplement p-values.

Keeping the secrecy aspect in mass e-voting.

Two years of the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed society's digitalization forward like nothing ever before. Activities that weren't achievable without personal contact, became present online. Currently, when the COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted and personal meetings are becoming possible, in some cases, it still appeared to be more convenient to "meet" virtually than physically. Some actions proved to be more effective when performed online. That is why some people didn't want to come back to the previous form of communication anymore. Many decision-makers who see all the advantages of online communication have turned to the new possibilities that are served by Internet systems. Hence, they intend to keep it virtual even now, when pandemic restrictions have been lifted in most cases. This situation implies lots of great ideas for virtualization. One of those is online voting and polling conducted on many voters - groups larger than just board members or delegates. Such balloting could be performed using a voting system. Unfortunately, in the case of the decision-making process, which should be treated as a one-time event, using typical solutions is mostly very ineffective. Observations revealed that e-voting procedures conducted on a large number of electors may be challenging for many, not computer-experienced users. The procedure of authentication has to stay present in order to protect the votings against ballot stuffing. Particularly in secret voting, the problem remains the same: how to verify the user for a secret ballot without revealing his data. In mass voting, additional issues appear such as how to complete the procedure on multiple (often not ICT-experienced) voters and how to make the system accessible and credible at the same time.