Trust in information sources, attitudes and behaviours during the coronavirus pandemic: Surveys of the British and US publics

This survey was designed to measure people's trust in different sources of information about coronavirus, along with a range of attitudes and reported coronavirus-related behaviours. More specifically, the survey included questions measuring:

- Individuals' trust in different sources of information about the coronavirus;

- Individuals' receptiveness to, and acceptance of, information about the coronavirus

- Individuals' uptake of existing coronavirus vaccine opportunities and their attitudes to future vaccination opportunities

- Individuals' attitudes to official measures designed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The survey was fielded on two samples: one in Britain and the other in the US. In each country, a nationally representative quota sample of adults aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas were set in both countries on age, gender, region and working status. The results were then weighted to the known offline population proportions for age, working status, social grade within gender and government office region (for the UK sample) and for age within gender, region, working status and household annual income (for the US sample). The surveys included just over 40 questions, and were designed to take respondents around 20 minutes to complete. The total number of respondents achieved was 1,501 in the UK and 1,499 in the US. The survey was conducted by Ipsos-MORI. Fieldwork took place in February 2022.

The surveys included a discrete choice (conjoint) experiment. In both study countries, the samples were split into two (with ~750 respondents in each). Respondents in each split sample were exposed to pairs of a single actor: either a government minister (in the UK) or a state governor (in the US), with responsibility for COVID-19; or a scientist advising government on COVID-19. The features of the actors within each pairing were varied across eight different attributes. Respondents were asked to select which actor within the pair they would trust more to provide reliable information. Each respondent was asked to make four pairwise choices.