The primary objective of this collaborative RAPID research project is to further our understanding of how cultural and political contexts shape the ways people perceive and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team will conduct 400 interviews across multiple urban and rural areas for an analysis oriented towards understanding how individuals construct and modify their perceptions given information from a wide variety of sources and their network of interactions with friends and family. The results of this project will provide a deeper understanding of the social mechanisms that shape perceptions and behaviors to public policy responses in culturally and politically diverse contexts. Perceptions of disease (i.e., perceived seriousness, susceptibility, and threat) shape perceived barriers and benefits to action, which in turn affect behavior. While it is given that these perceptions are important to understand health-related behaviors as well as support for various treatments and actions, it is crucial to understand how these perceptions are generated. The project interviews and the analysis are to be widely distributed to provide grounded guidance for policy makers and others seeking to understand the diversity of fears, risk perceptions, preparedness, and acceptable actions in pandemics.
The research team will collect qualitative and quantitative data on groups selected for their importance to pandemic processes (transmission and treatment of information and infectious agents). The groups are stratified into five categories: scientists, medical professionals, teachers, the informal sector, and the unemployed. The purposes of the Interviews are to Identify the principal sources of information about COVID-19 transmission, treatment, and risk, including both new and old media as well as the factors associated with their relative importance across regions, occupations, and rural/urban areas; to examine factors that impact the credibility of sources in both absolute and relative terms; and to assess the level of knowledge and preparation for COVID-19 transmission, treatment, and risk. They will be used to Identify primary fears and concerns relevant to the current spectrum of treatment, isolation, and containment technologies. The results of this project will contribute to an understanding of the different ways cultural and political contexts shape response to outbreak information and directives, and they will provide guidance for policy makers seeking to understand these differences.
This project is jointly funded by the Science and Technology Studied Program, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
