In the COVID-19 pandemic, who did we trust? An eight-country cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Trust is a key determinant of health, but has been undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infodemic. Using data from eight countries, we aimed to epidemiologically describe levels of trust in health, governments, news media organisations, and experts, and measure the impact of political orientation and COVID-19 information sources on participant's levels of trust.

Methods

We simultaneously conducted a stratified randomised online cross-sectional study across eight countries on adults aged ≥18 years between 6 and 18 November 2020. We employed crude and adjusted weighted regression analyses.

Results

We included 9027 adults with a mean age of 47 years (range = 18-99), of whom 4667 (51.7%) were female. Trust in health experts ranked highest acro

SUBMITTER: Schluter AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10471152 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature