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Current Location: Home > Research Studies > Science Museum, London |
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Science Museum Visitors
The antimicrobial resistance site was tested in the Science Museum, London as part of their ‘live science’ program. Over a period of seven days during the two 2003 February half-term weeks 227 people took part in the study. Each participant was asked to complete a questionnaire about antibiotic resistance, then freely browse this website and complete the questionnaire again. Of these 177 completed both questionnaires. This provided a rich set of data to analyze. A paired t-test was performed to test the statistical significance of changes between pairs of questionnaires. The results are summarised below, unfortunately the correct answers are not provided so that future and current studies are not compromised:
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Knowledge changes
The following graph shows the changes in the percentage of people answering correctly to the true/false statements.
The results show clear improvements in knowledge of users after using the website for three of the four statements above. |
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Attitude Changes
The following graph shows the changes in expectations of receiving antibiotics for acute otitis media. A score of 5 is equal to strongly agree and a score of 1 is equal to strongly disagree.
The graph shows a significant decrease in the expectations of users receiving antibiotics for acute otitis media.
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Conclusion
We can see from the above graphs that there were significant changes in knowledge about and attitudes to antibiotic prescribing between completing the two questionnaires. This suggests that the website does influence user knowledge and attitudes.
Our thanks to Sabiha Foster and the live science team at the Science Museum for their help with the data collection.
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Related Publications
Madle G, Kostkova P, Mani-Saada J, Williams P, Weinberg J "Changing public attitudes to antimicrobial prescribing: can the Internet help?" Informatics in Primary Care (in press)
Madle G, Kostkova P, Mani-Saada J, Weinberg J "Using the Internet to inform the public about antimicrobial resistance" Eurosurveillance Weekly 8 (13) 2004
Madle G, Kostkova P, Mani-Saada J, Weinberg J "Evaluating the changes in knowledge and attitudes of digital library users" In the proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries - ECDL 2003, Koch T, Torvik Sølvberg I, eds. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2003
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