Trust and Transparency in times of Crisis: Results from an Online Survey During the First Wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the UK - Qualitative Data

Enria, L, Waterlow, N, Rogers, N, Brindle, H, Lal, S, Eggo, RM, Lees, S and Roberts, C. 2020. Trust and Transparency in times of Crisis: Results from an Online Survey During the First Wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the UK - Qualitative Data. [Online]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom. Available from: https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001859.

Enria, L, Waterlow, N, Rogers, N, Brindle, H, Lal, S, Eggo, RM, Lees, S and Roberts, C. Trust and Transparency in times of Crisis: Results from an Online Survey During the First Wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the UK - Qualitative Data [Internet]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; 2020. Available from: https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001859.

Enria, L, Waterlow, N, Rogers, N, Brindle, H, Lal, S, Eggo, RM, Lees, S and Roberts, C (2020). Trust and Transparency in times of Crisis: Results from an Online Survey During the First Wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 Epidemic in the UK - Qualitative Data. [Data Collection]. London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.17037/DATA.00001859.

Description

A qualitative dataset that contains free-text responses collected during a survey of public perceptions of the UK government's response during the first wave (April 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic, with specific focus upon the relationship between trust and transparency. It contains free text responses of approximately 7,600 people, drawn from a total of 9,322 respondents who completed the online questionnaire. Respondents were asked the question "Do you think that the government tells you the whole truth about coronavirus and COVID-19?" with the possible answers "Always","Mostly","Sometimes","Almost never", "Never" and "I don't know". Those who did not answer "Always" were then asked to "Briefly describe what it is that you think the government is not being fully truthful about?"

Methods

Description of data capture

Anonymous survey data from UK residents were collected online between 2020-04-06 and 2020-04-22 using an Open Data Kit (ODK) XLSForm (https://getodk.github.io/xforms-spec/) deployed on Enketo smart paper (https://enketo.org/) via ODK Aggregate v.2.0.3 (https://github.com/getodk/aggregate). Form level encryption and end-to-end encryption of data transfer were implemented on all submissions. The survey contained 49 questions, which covered topics on (1) Demographics; (2) Health and Health Behaviours; (3) Adherence to COVID-19 Control measures; (4) Information sources used to learn about COVID-19; (5) Trust in various information sources, government and government decision-making; (6) Rumours and misinformation; (7) Contact & Communication during COVID-19; and (8) Fear and Isolation. The survey was distributed using Facebook’s premium “Boost Post” feature, which enables a post to function as an advert that can be targeted at specific demographics. The study team boosted details of the survey and its URL to a target audience of 113,280 Facebook users aged 13-65+ years and living in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The survey was further distributed using a ‘daisy-chaining’ approach in which respondents were asked to share and encourage onward sharing of the survey’s Uniform Resource Locator (URL) among friends & colleagues. A number of faith institutions, schools and special interest groups were also contacted directly for assistance in dissemination of the URL. A mixed methods approach was taken to data analysis, combining statistical analyses, structural topic modelling (STM) and qualitative thematic coding of a sub-set of responses. Missing data were imputed via multiple imputation.

Data capture method

Questionnaire: Fixed form - Web-based

Data Collection Period

From	To
6 April 2020	22 April 2020

Date (Date submitted to LSHTM repository)

3 September 2020

Geographical area covered (offline during plugin upgrade)

North Latitude	East Longitude	South Latitude	West Longitude
59.1683	2.4137	49.5441	-12.5277

Language(s) of written materials

English

People & Groups

Data Creators	Enria, L, Waterlow, N, Rogers, N, Brindle, H, Lal, S, Eggo, RM, Lees, S and Roberts, C
LSHTM Faculty/Department	Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health > Dept of Infectious Disease Epidemiology Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases > Dept of Clinical Research Faculty of Public Health and Policy > Dept of Global Health and Development
Research Group	LSHTM Global Health Analytics Group
Participating Institutions	London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom