Weathers presents research at SECFR conference

Senior psychology major Allee Kate Weathers represented Mississippi University for Women at the Southeastern Council on Family Relations annual conference, where she presented her research, “YouTube Videos About IUDs are Relevant for Consumers,”  on Thursday, April 16.

“The experience was very interesting, and I enjoyed it a lot!” Weathers said. “I enjoyed hearing about other students’ research, and I loved talking with the other students and faculty about my research.”

Weathers’s research analyzed YouTube videos about Intrauterine Devices (IUD), evaluating the information conveyed and the effectiveness of said information.

Using Apify, a web scraping and data extraction platform, Weathers and Dr. Dorothy Berglund, her mentor, data scraped 60 randomly selected videos and used a random number scale to select 50 of the videos to rate on the DISCERN Scale. The DISCERN Scale is a 16-item questionnaire used to judge the quality of health information pertaining to treatment options.

“We found that most creators were health professionals, and most of the videos were educational,” she said. “Additionally, most of the videos were neutral in feeling tone. Both healthcare professionals and patients were found to stay relevant to the topic of IUDs in their videos.”

There were some areas that did not score as well, however.

“Most professionals did not explain what would happen if consumers did not get an IUD,” Weathers said. “Consumers also did not do well on providing additional sources of information in the description box or comment section of their videos, and they did not explain when their experience with an IUD occurred.”

The hope is that her research can be used to create a format in which creators make videos that effectively convey information while also engaging with a broader audience.

Weathers is thankful for the support the department has given her during her time as a student.

“The faculty in the Department of Psychology and Family Science have been very supportive of me and have encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, which has helped me feel more involved at The W, and it has made my college experience more meaningful and enjoyable!” she said.

Weathers plans to take a gap year before attending graduate school for clinical psychology.

She added, “I feel like my time at The W has prepared me immensely, and I feel like the research experience I have gotten will help me when I go to graduate school!”