Vulnerability / Trust in Covid-19 Times
General information
Together with Macartan Humphreys, Ana Garcia-Hernandez, Melina Platas, Leah Rosenzweig, Lily Tsai, and Paul Kiwanuka-Mukiibi, we coordinated a 3-wave panel survey during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Kampala (Summer and Fall 2020).
Relying on a representative sample of Kampala residents, these phone surveys aimed to provide up-to-date information to policymakers on:
- the extent to which the Coronavirus is spreading through the population
- patterns of social distancing compliance among residents
- hardships at the household level caused by the lockdown measures
Questions
Additionally, of theoretical interest to the research team, the surveys were also designed to get at (1) how intra-group and inter-group trust in the community changes as a result of a health crisis, and (2) the willingness of residents to take up a (at that time) potential Covid-19 vaccine.
The 3 surveys were run in June-July 2020 (wave 1), September-October (wave 2), and November-December (wave 3), with the invaluable help of our implementation partners in IPA Uganda. In addition to standard questions about trust and compliance, the surveys also included:
- non-intrusive measures of compliance designed to elicit more truthful answers
- vignette/survey experiments
- behavioral measures of willingness to engage with the local bureaucracy
Outputs
For more information about the project, you can check the following outputs:
- The original pre-analysis plans for the surveys
- A dashboard designed to showcase to policymakers, in real-time, anonymized results from the surveys
- Results from the survey were added to similar survey results from other countries, and included in this Nature Medicine article
The project was funded through a generous grant from Innovations for Poverty Action’s Peace and Recovery program.