A new study from the University of Oregon is looking at Americans’ perceptions of the COVID-19 coronavirus, and how they’re reacting to it. Unlike traditional studies, it is looking at perceptions during the crisis rather than after.
The study is done through a longitudinal survey, meaning that about 1,300 people across America are being surveyed multiple times over the course of the study, through a service called Amazon Turk. It also looks at social media and traditional media, to see how the virus is portrayed as it develops. The study’s purpose is to match emotional reactions to real-world events, according to Ellen Peters, director of the Center for Science Communication Research at UO.
“We’re looking at their emotional reactions, their risk perceptions, the kinds of behaviors they’re taking with respect to the coronavirus,” Peters said. “And we’re looking at how all of that shifts over time with the media portrayal of coronavirus.”
The purpose of the study is to better understand how the human mind works when it comes to reacting to national crises, Peters said. She said that when the next crisis inevitably hits, they will be better able to communicate with the public.
Peters said the initial idea for the study actually came from graduate student Michael Silverstein, who is studying social and personality psychology at the University of Oregon.
Silverstein said that he came up with the idea while working on a breast cancer treatment project. “I actually was working on creating a poster to present a conference on that, and all this stuff happened with the coronavirus,” he said. “I saw all these connections between them while talking to people about it.”
The study is done in waves, originally re-questioning the respondents every month.
However, as the virus began to get worse, scientists found it necessary to change it to every other week, said Brittany Shoots-Reinhard, senior research associate and one of the co-investigators for the study.
“This was completely unprecedented,” Shoots-Reinhard said. “The closest thing that anyone had to compare it to was H1N1 or SARS.”
In those cases, she said, “There was certainly news coverage, and there were certainly cases, but it wasn’t the sort of pandemic level where we’re seeing worldwide shelter-in-place orders.”
Some questions even had to be taken off the survey completely. “It doesn’t really make sense to ask people about if they’re planning on staying home if everybody’s, you know, been ordered to stay home,” Shoots-Reinhard said.
While more waves of questions are planned, researchers already have an idea of what the results will be: Trust in public officials and organizations like the CDC will likely be high, but opinions on figures like President Donald Trump will likely get more partisan as time goes on. And overall, people’s behaviors will drastically change.
“What we’re expecting is that as time passes,” Shoots-Reinhard said, “people’s fear and their risk perceptions are going to go up really high.”
