Home>Attitudes Towards Covid-19: a comparative study

Attitudes Towards Covid-19: a comparative study

The Citizens’ Attitudes Under the COVID-19 Pandemic project is coordinated by Sylvain Brouard (Sciences Po, CEVIPOF), Michael Becher (IAST, University of Toulouse 1), Martial Foucault (Sciences Po, CEVIPOF) and Pavlos Vasilopoulos (University of York and CEVIPOF). At different stages, they will all be involved in ensuring the success and relevance of the project for all those with responsibility for handling the COVID pandemic. Participation will be open to academics, institutions, and public or private organizations.

Section #project

Project

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive challenge it entails for global health and economics, it is imperative that the social sciences be mobilized to measure, analyze and explain ordinary people’s perceptions of and behavioral reactions to the disease caused by the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). It is equally essential that attitudes towards policies on a number of issues – health, the economy, civil liberties – and towards governments and institutions be investigated and documented.

The project will investigate representations, attitudes and reactions among the general public in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in a number of countries exposed to the coronavirus. Contrary to conventional research projects, this proposal will be implemented over a short period of time and offer relevant and immediate deliverables for academics and public decision-makers.

  1. To measure the dynamics of perceptions and (social) representations among different groups of people, based on stratified representative samples.
  2. To explain the reasons why people are more or less likely to comply with public recommendations under certain circumstances (to be investigated by online survey and randomized experiments).
  3. To address causal mechanisms by which people perceive the salience of how the virus disseminates differently and react to the discourse of public authorities and other public opinion leaders in their community accordingly.
  4. To study the conditions under which the post-COVID-19 period is likely both to increase fragmentation within societies and to affect social cohesion. The survey will provide information on how citizens’ expectations are shaped on the transformations and economic disorders they will have to deal with in the post COVID-19 era.
  5. To investigate how people respond to the crisis in terms of economic well-being, tax implications, preferences on the role of the State, economic choices related to the national context and supranational environment (cooperation vs. self-interest).

Apart from its academic contribution, this project aims to assist public authorities in making decisions and designing efficient policies, particularly in terms of information provision. The full implementation of policies to combat COVID-19 largely depends on their public acceptance as the imposition of confinement shows. In addition, public authorities may in the future have to make difficult choices in the allocation of scarce resources (e.g. tests), and this will require sensitive and appropriate communication strategies to maintain social cohesion. During the following days and weeks, the project will provide a unique public opinion barometer on individual well-being, fatigue, and attitudes toward public health recommendations that will allow for the understanding of (a) how different publics cope psychologically with the wave of unprecedented social distancing measures and (b) the extent to which the public health measures adopted may be compromised should citizens not cooperate fully.

More specifically, this project will help public authorities to: (1) identify the issues on which there is a high degree of consensus and those which are more controversial; (2) understand some of the factors which structure public opinion and social representations and which might hamper the implementation of health policies; (3) understand the mechanisms and contextual conditions by which people react differently in the case of an infectious disease.; (4) identify specific groups in the population who need to be targeted by more intense information campaigns (for instance, groups who are more likely to believe fake news).

Each week, the research team will provide policy makers (elected officials, government executives, senior civil servants etc.) with one or two memos and policy briefs.

Section #methodology

Methodology

The methodological design consists of a broad series of online public opinion surveys in 18 countries. The survey will be repeated at least 4 times in every country, with a frequency ranging from 1 per week to 1 every other week. The number of respondents is expected to be panelized with an attrition rate not exceeding 40% between each wave. The questionnaire will take no more than 15 minutes to complete in order to satisfy budgetary constraints. At the time of writing, IPSOS is the preferred pollster operator due to its international expertise and competitive financial terms. However, each country leader is free to select another pollster provided that the chosen organization guarantees both consistent methods and responsiveness in terms of deliverables (data and technical report).

The selection of 18 countries (this number may be revised upwards should extra revenue become available) was made on the bases of two criteria: variety of pandemic diffusion and nature of anti-COVID-19 recommendations made by public authorities. These countries were also chosen as a result of the prompt response to the crisis by well-reputed scholars in their respective academic domain who are familiar with international comparative surveys.

All surveys are run through CAWI (Computer-assisted web interviewing) on samples going from 2,000 respondents to 1,000 resp. Stratification technique is done according to AGE, SEX, REGION, OCCUPATION. In some countries (as in Africa), languages and ethnicity may be used.

The basic design implies a 4-wave structure. Accordingly, the pollster has to interview in priority first respondents (with an expected rate of attrition by 30%) allowing to expect a panelized dataset for each country.

An additional survey will be made in the case of France at the end of the confinement period on a large sample (N=10,000 people) to get deeper knowledge on socio-demographics, values, and social cohesion of respondents.

For each survey, at least 60% of the questionnaire is similar from one country to another one, leaving room to address specific questions related to the context of the country.

CountriesNb of wavesSample
France15 waves2,000 people
Italy4 waves1,000 people
Germany4 waves1,000 people
UK4 waves1,000 people
Austria4 waves1,000 people
Sweden3 waves1,000 people
Poland3 waves1,000 people
Canada3 waves1,000 people
USA4 waves2,000 people
New-Zealand3 waves1,000 people
Australia3 waves1,000 people
French Overseas*2 waves800-1,000 people
South Africa3 waves1,000 people
Nigeria3 waves1,000 people
Niger2 waves1,000 people
Egypt3 waves1,000 people
Morocco3 waves1,000 people
Ivory Coast2 waves800 people
Senegal2 waves1,000 people
Argentina2 waves1,000 people
Brazil3 waves1,000 people

* (New-Caledonia, Mayotte, Reunion)

Attitudes towards Covid-19: Map of countries under investigation
Map of countries under investigation
  • Compliance with public recommendations
  • Perceptions of the virus as a threat
  • Change of behaviour during the lock-down / confinement / economic recession
  • Measurements of individual well-being / trust / quality of life
  • Social cohesion and social isolation
  • Preferences for public intervention / Welfare state at the national and local level of government (in particular for decentralized countries)
  • Partisan proximity and ideological preferences
  • Willingness to contribute to the public good (fight against the pandemic) / increased taxation
  • Attitudes towards cooperation vs. isolationism
  • Measure of risk-aversion on policy issues
  • Issue salience and policy preferences (in terms of budget spending)
  • Individual values (open vs. closed society / cultural and economic liberalism vs. conservatism)
Section #results
Section #publications

France :

Morocco:

Section #data

Data

Survey data are accessible through the current SciencesPo dataverse.

For all countries, you may access to questionnaires, descriptive statistics, presentation of salient questions and results, comparative distribution.

Section #people

People

  • Sylvain Brouard (Sciences Po Research director, sylvain.brouard@sciencespo.fr)
  • Michael Becher (Ass. Prof at IAST within Toulouse School of Economics (University of Toulouse)
  • Martial Foucault (Full professor at Sciences Po and director of the CEVIPOF, martial.foucault@sciencespo.fr)
  • Pavlos Vasilopoulos (Lecturer at the University of York)
  • Christoph Hönnige (Full Prof. at the University of Hanover)
  • Vincent Pons (Ass. Prof. à Harvard Business School and NBER)
  • Kevin Arceneaux (Full prof. at Temple University)
  • Eric Bélanger (Full Prof. at McGill University)
  • Jean-François Daoust (Ass. Prof at the University of Edinburgh)
  • Ruth Dassonneville (Ass. Prof at the University of Montreal and Chairholder of the Canada Research Chair in Electoral Democracy)
  • Vincenzo Galasso (Full Prof at Bocconi University)
  • Hanspeter Kriesi (Full Prof. at the European University Institute)
  • Erik Lachapelle (Ass. Prof. at the University of Montreal)
  • Richard Nadeau (Full Prof. at the University of Montreal)
  • Dominique Reynié (Full professor of political science at Sciences Po and director of the Fondapol)
  • Grégroire Rota-Graziosi (Full Prof. at the University of Auvergne and director of the CERDI-CNRS)
  • Sandra León (University Carlos III of Madrid)
  • Pierre-Henri Bono, PhD, data scientist and research engineer.
  • Elie Michel, Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Nicolas Sormani, CNRS data scientist.
  • Diego Antolinos-Basso, research engineer and webmaster, diego.antolinosbasso@sciencespo.fr
Section #partners

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