Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected infection avoidance tendencies? Adjustment of house effects on Web survey by propensity score

ABSTRACT

This study examines whether the psychological tendencies during the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) pandemic differed from that in normal times based on Web-based survey data from two different samples. The target of the analysis was the tendency to avoid infection. In doing so, we considered the house effects of the different survey media and attempted to compensate for them by inverse probability weighted estimation using propensity scores calculated with several covariates. The results showed that even after adjustment, infection avoidance tendencies were higher during the pandemic than normal times. We discussed the significance of adjusting for house effects in the Web-based survey and some of the limitations of this study. © 2022 Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.