A Conditional Process Analysis of Emerging Adults’ Motivated Information Management with Parents, Family Conversation Orientation, and Intentions to Vaccinate for COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Using the theory of motivated information management (TMIM), this study tested the effect of emerging adults’ uncertainty discrepancy about COVID-19 vaccines on their intentions to vaccinate. In March and April of 2021, 424 emerging adult children reported on the likelihood of seeking or avoiding information from a parent about COVID-19 vaccines in response to their uncertainty discrepancy and negative emotions related to the vaccines. Results supported the direct and indirect effects specified by the TMIM. Moreover, the indirect effects of uncertainty discrepancy on intentions to vaccinate via the TMIM’s explanatory mechanisms were conditioned by family conversation orientation. Consequently, the family communication environment may alter motivated information management in parent-child relationships.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2023.2185348

Notes

1. We inadvertently altered the response scales for the first two items in Afifi and Weiner’s (2006) measure (i.e., both items should have ranged from 1= nothing to 7 = everything), which prevented us from calculating a discrepancy score by subtracting responses to the first item from the second and recoding the other items so that they ranged from −3 to 3 and could be averaged together with the discrepancy score. However, our use of structural equation modeling enabled us to use the information from each item that is true to the latent construct of “uncertainty discrepancy” and remove the unique information (due to differences in response formats) and error information from the structural model. Both parcels produced strong and comparable factor loadings of .71 and .78, respectively.

2. We inadvertently omitted one item from Afifi and Weiner’s (2006) original scale, which may explain why the internal reliability was a bit lower than that obtained in previous research.

3. The latent constructs of uncertainty discrepancy, negative emotions, and intentions to vaccinate, as well as the covariates, were formed by parceling each related measurement scale using a balancing approach (Little et al., 2013), with equality constraints placed on constructs identified with only two parcels (i.e., uncertainty discrepancy and intentions to vaccinate) to maintain tau equivalence. Individual items were used to identify the latent constructs of outcome expectancy, information seeking, and information avoidance. For efficacy, composite scores for communication and coping efficacies were used to identify the latent construct using equality constraints.

4. Low (M = 4.27), moderate (M = 5.40), and high levels (M = 6.33) of conversation orientation were set at the 16^th, 50^th, and 84^th percentiles.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.