Public opinion about the UK government during COVID-19 and implications for public health: A topic modeling analysis of open-ended survey response data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Confidence in the central UK Government has declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while this may be linked to specific government actions to curb the spread of the virus, understanding is still incomplete. Examining public opinion is important, as research suggests that low confidence in government increases the extent of non-compliance with infection-dampening rules (for instance, social distancing); however, the detailed reasons for this association are still unclear.

Methods

To understand public opinion on the central UK government during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we used structural topic modeling, a text mining technique, to extract themes from over 4000 free-text survey responses, collected between 14 October and 26 Novemb

SUBMITTER: Wright L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9009625 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature