2.2. Materials
Media
Background Information Survey. The survey consisted of questions that asked the participants about their age, gender, highest level of education, living status, and socioeconomic status (household income) (see Media Exposure. This consisted of two questions about the participants’ media consumption habits. For example, the first question in this section asked the participants how many days per week, on average, they consumed media: (1 = 0–1 days; 2 = 2–3 days; 3 = 4–5 days; or 4 = 6–7 days). The second question concerned how closely the participant followed news, specifically about the COVID-19 pandemic, and was measured using a five-point scale (1 = not at all; 5 = very closely).General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12; [COVID-19 News. There were a total of four COVID news articles, adapted from news articles (from online news sources including Response to COVID-19 news questionnaire. The questionnaire administered to all participants after reading the articles inquired about how the participant felt in response to each of the two COVID-19 news articles they had just read. There were a total of four questions per news article: (1) whether the article made them feel happy, (2) if they wanted to read more about the subject discussed in the article, (3) if the news article made them feel fearful, and (4) whether they wanted to forget or ignore the news article. Responses to the questions were scored using a five-point scale (1 = Strongly Disagree; 5 = Strongly Agree). As the third and fourth questions were negatively framed, they were reverse scored (e.g., a score of 5 was converted to 1, 4 was converted to 2, and so on) such that a composite score, i.e., a positive response score, was computed based on the sum of responses for easy interpretation. Multivariate ANOVA analyses revealed no significant effect concerning whether the COVID news questions were framed positively (Q1 and Q2) or negatively (Q3 and Q4) (