ABSTRACT
Policy and communication responses to COVID-19 can benefit from better understanding of people's baseline and resulting beliefs, behaviours and norms. From July 2020 to March 2021, we fielded a global survey on these topics in 67 countries yielding over 2 million responses. This paper provides an overview of the motivation behind the survey design, details the sampling and weighting designed to make the results representative of populations of interest and presents some insights learned from the survey. Several studies have already used the survey data to analyse risk perception, attitudes towards mask wearing and other preventive behaviours, as well as trust in information sources across communities worldwide. This resource can open new areas of enquiry in public health, communication and economic policy by leveraging large-scale, rich survey datasets on beliefs, behaviours and norms during a global pandemic.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , COVID-19/prevention & control , Humans , Pandemics/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2 , Surveys and Questionnaires , TrustABSTRACT
As health professionals develop health communication for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we implore that these communication approaches do not include fear appeals. Fear appeals, also known as scare tactics, have been widely used to promote recommended preventive behaviors. We contend that unintended negative outcomes can result from fear appeals that intensify the already complex pandemic and efforts to contain it. We encourage public health professionals to reevaluate their desire to use fear appeals in COVID-19 health communication and recommend that evidence-based health communication be utilized to address the needs of a specific community, help people understand what they are being asked to do, explain step-by-step how to complete preventative behaviors, and consider external factors needed to support the uptake of behaviors. To aid health professionals in redirecting away from the use of fear appeals, we offer a phased approach to creating health communication messages during the COVID-19 crisis.