Rachel A Smith

Biographic Data

ID3619783
NAMERachel A Smith
GIVEN NAMESRachel A
FAMILY NAMESmith
SIGNATURESMITH R A
AFFILIATIONSPennsylvania State University
ORCID0000-0003-0392-3735
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS55
TOTAL CITATIONS115
AUTHOR COUNT55
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1969
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX5

  • “It Is in the Air”

    Open AccessC Skurka, Cassandra L C Troy et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2026

    Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a biomedical intervention that dramatically lowers one’s risk of acquiring HIV. However, PrEP uptake has been slow among young-adult men who have sex with men (YMSM) – one group highly vulnerable to HIV infection in the US. Drawing from health communication scholarship on information seeking and scanning, as well as on concepts from the health belief model, we convened individual interviews and focus groups with…

  • The Threads of Campus Life

    Open AccessMichael G Brown, Rachel A Smith et al.ARTICLEReview of Educational Research2026

    Higher education scholars and practitioners recognize the essential role students’ relationships with others play in learning processes, yet research that examines how campuses shape social structures and their effects using relational methods appears limited and disconnected. We systematically review literature from 2010–2023 that has applied social network analysis (SNA) to the study of undergraduate students to identify the research questions,…

  • People and Places

    Open AccessStephanie Sowl, Rachel A Smith et al.ARTICLEResearch in Higher Education2025

  • Vivifying Outbreaks

    Open AccessRachel A Smith, Youzhen Su et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2025

    Although visual depictions of epidemiological data are not new in public health, the US public saw more of them during the COVID-19 pandemic than ever before. In this study, we considered visualizations of forecasts (i.e. predictions of how a disaster will unfold over time) formatted as line charts. We investigated how two choices scientists make when creating a forecast visual – the outcome of focus (cases or deaths) and the amount of data provi…

  • Understanding the Effects of Digital Storytelling on OUD Stigma Reduction

    Open AccessRachel A Smith, Ruth A Osoro et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2025

    Stigma interferes with all aspects of opioid use disorder (OUD) recovery. One way to reduce public stigma of OUD is through exposure to a type of digital storytelling, in which the public is exposed to outgroup storytellers sharing their experiences with recovery in short videos or narratives posted online. The past two decades have seen an explosion in digital storytelling projects, but we still have much to understand about why exposure to digi…

  • Pilot evaluation of an innovative school-based mental health literacy program for teachers and students

    Open AccessEmily Habgood, Sarthak Gandhi et al.ARTICLEThe Australian Educational…2025

    Mental health literacy interventions in school settings are growing in number and scope, yet challenges in user engagement and real-world implementation persist. The Decode Mental Health and Wellbeing Program (Decode) is a novel and innovative mental health literacy program for teachers and students that harnesses the power of social media platform-style content delivery and lived experience influencers to engage young people. Using a multi-site,…

  • Motivating neighborhood-focused health activism

    Youllee Kim, Rachel A SmithARTICLEJournal of Applied Communication…2025

    Research into activism – collective actions to challenge and change shared threats to wellbeing – tends to focus on extraordinary activists, instead of ordinary people. Neighborhood residents can play critical roles in such efforts, engaging in activism to address issues shared by residents within their neighborhoods, and communication could play a role in inspiring such efforts. By expanding communication infrastructure theory, this study (N = 4…

  • Digital storytelling and public stigma

    Ruth A Osoro, Rachel A Smith et al.ARTICLECommunication Monographs2025References: 12

  • Gender Differences in Employed Parents' Self‐Rated Health During Covid ‐19 School Closures in an Affluent US Community

    Open AccessMolly A Martins, Virginia K Leiter et al.ARTICLESociological Inquiry2025References: 25

    We examine whether the timing and duration of COVID-19 school closures during fall 2020 and winter 2020/21 are associated with employed parents' self-rated health compared to non-parents and parents unexposed to closures. Data comes from a longitudinal survey of 227 employed parents of school-aged children and 497 employed community residents without minor children in an affluent, semi-rural mid-Atlantic county. School closure exposure is measure…

  • The Role of Fatigue in a Campus Covid-19 Safety Behaviors Campaign

    Open AccessLijiang Shen, James Price Dillard et al.ARTICLEAmerican Behavioral Scientist2025References: 16

    Message fatigue is the aversive motivational state that results from excessive exposure to campaign messages or similar information over an extended period of time. When fatigued, individuals become less attentive, less responsive, and more resistant to campaign messages and related information. Thus, understanding the bases and functioning of fatigue in persuasive health campaigns has obvious value. Despite considerable interest in this importan…

  • Adoption and Discontinuance of Innovation Packages

    Rachel A Smith, Jessica Gall Myrick et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2024

    The past decades have seen growing interest and application of interventions targeting the change of multiple behaviors at once. We advance this work by using the diffusion of innovations theory (DOI) to consider constellations of behaviors as innovation packages: multiple innovations that are logically related, interdependent in their use or effects, and often promoted as a set (Rogers, 2003). In addition, we embraced DOI’s focus on behavioral d…

  • Extending the Theory of Normative Social Behavior

    Xun Zhu, Christopher J Carpenter et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2024

    Novel, public behaviors, such as masking, should be susceptible to normative influence. This paper advances the theory of normative social behavior by considering a new set of moderators of normative influence — superdiffuser traits — and by clarifying the antecedents and consequences of exposure to collective norms. We use data from a two-wave survey of a cohort living in one U.S. county during the pandemic (N = 913) to assess normative effects …

  • Character, contact, and stigma reduction

    Rachel A Smith, Ruth A Osoro et al.ARTICLEJournal of Applied Communication…2024

    Communication may play a key role in deconstructing existing stigmas. One popular initiative to reduce the stigma of opioid use disorder (OUD) is to increase contact between people in recovery and the public through digital storytelling. Why do some stories and storytellers make a more powerful impact? We drew upon the theory of character construction to offer new explanations for why mediated intergroup contact can facilitate positive intergroup…

  • Campus Ecological Networks

    Michael G Brown, Rachel A SmithARTICLEJournal of college student…2024

    Collegiate environments that aim to support equitable learning are rarely conceptualized and studied in a manner that is explicitly relational and structural, leaving room for theorizing about how social constructions of meaning and power operate on campus. We apply social network theory and methods to campus ecological frameworks to develop a campus ecological network model. Rather than focusing on sets of individuals, a network-oriented stance …

  • Sexual Minority Mothers

    Samantha L Tornello, Rachel A SmithARTICLEJournal of Homosexuality2024Cited by: 1References: 75

    For all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, transition to parenthood often increases stress, although, according to minority stress theory (MST), same-sex couples often experience additional stressors specifically related to their sexual orientation. In this study of 34 same-sex female couples (68 sexual minority mothers) who conceived their children with the use of sperm donation, we explored the intrapersonal and interpersonal influences…

  • Persuasive Messages, Social Norms, and Reactance

    James Price Dillard, Xi Tian et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2023

    Efforts by universities to reduce the spread of COVID-19 include health campaigns intended to encourage students to wear masks. While well-intended, these efforts may produce counter-persuasion (e.g., decrease masking) if they are seen as threatening individuals’ freedom to choose. In a rolling cross-sectional study of one university campaign (n = 681), we found that the presence of the campaign did instigate a form of resistance known as reactan…

  • Covid-19 Mitigation Among College Students

    Rachel A Smith, Meg L Small et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2023

    By fall 2020, students returning to U.S. university campuses were mandated to engage in COVID-19 mitigation behaviors, including masking, which was a relatively novel prevention behavior in the U.S. Masking became a target of university mandates and campaigns, and it became politicized. Critical questions are whether the influences of injunctive norms and response efficacy on one behavior (i.e. masking) spill over to other mitigation behaviors (e…

  • Grab it and change it, it’s yours

    Open AccessRachel A Smith, Janet BanfieldARTICLEEnvironment and Planning C…2023References: 21

    This paper argues for incorporation of attitude into geographical work on affect. We do so through an engagement with affect in musical experiences and adopting as our focus punk music in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. Through a combination of lyrical analysis and in-depth interviews with some of those involved in the punk scene in Northern Ireland at that time, we find that affective responses to musical experiences can be translated into at…

  • How Constructions of Interpersonal Responsibility Shape Undergraduate Student Networks in Times of Social Distancing

    Open AccessMichael G Brown, Michael Brown et al.ARTICLEAmerican Behavioral Scientist2023References: 32

    Since Spring 2020, college students have experienced rapid and unpredictable shifts in their social and academic worlds. As institutions implemented social distancing policies, students had to navigate unstable norms related to peer interaction while negotiating what it meant to act responsibly to ensure their own safety and help their communities. Drawing on a network-based approach to pro-social behavior, we conducted a study of undergraduate s…

  • How Americans Make Sense of Two Novel Pandemics

    Edward L Fink, Rachel A Smith et al.ARTICLEHealth Communication2022

    Using Galileo theory and method of multidimensional scaling (MDS), we compared the psychological distances between concepts related to two pandemic viruses, Zika and COVID-19. Surveys (Zika, N = 410; COVID-19, N = 291) were used to investigate the role of media use and interpersonal communication on the relationship between 10 concepts in multidimensional spaces. We asked these four research questions: Do the two spaces represent the two pandemic…

  • Longitudinal study of an emerging Covid-19 stigma

    Rachel A Smith, Xun Zhu et al.ARTICLEStigma and Health2022

  • Mixed-methods Analysis of Adults Likely versus Unlikely to Get a Covid-19 Vaccination

    Lauren J Van Scoy, Heather J Costigan et al.ARTICLEAmerican Journal of Health Behavior2022

    Objectives: This mixed-methods study compared perspectives of those 'very likely' versus 'very unlikely' to receive a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine. Methods: We used an explanatory, sequential, mixed- methods design to analyze quantitative data from a rural Pennsylvania sample. Of the 976 participants, 67 selected 'very unlikely' to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Responses to open-ended questions: "What worries you the most about the COVID 19 pandemic…

  • Mapping the Racial Terrain of Ottoman Sephardic Travelogues

    Rachel A SmithARTICLEJournal of the Ottoman and…2022Cited by: 1

  • Rural College Graduates

    Open AccessStephanie Sowl, Rachel A Smith et al.ARTICLERural Sociology2022Cited by: 15References: 7

    Many rural communities throughout the United States have experienced brain drain or the out-migration of educated young people. Explanations for why college-educated adults leave rural communities have relied on economic rationales; however, the effects of social identities, community context, and place attachment have also been shown to influence migration decisions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (…

  • Informe Horizon

    Iolanda García González, Ismael Peña López et al.