Who is sceptical about emerging public health threats? Results from 39 national surveys in the United Kingdom.
Public Health 2015;
129:1553-62. [PMID:
26603602 PMCID:
PMC4684148 DOI:
10.1016/j.puhe.2015.09.004]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/11/2015] [Revised: 08/04/2015] [Accepted: 09/17/2015] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
Objectives
Members of the public are often sceptical about warnings of an impending public health crisis. Breaking through this scepticism is important if we are to convince people to take urgent protective action. In this paper we explored correlates of perceiving that ‘too much fuss’ was being made about the 2009/10 influenza A H1N1v (‘swine flu’) pandemic.
Study design
A secondary analysis of data from 39 nationally representative telephone surveys conducted in the UK during the pandemic.
Methods
Each cross-sectional survey (combined n = 42,420) collected data over a three day period and asked participants to state whether they agreed or disagreed that ‘too much fuss is being made about the risk of swine flu.’
Results
Overall, 55.1% of people agreed or strongly agreed with this sentiment. Perceiving that too much fuss was being made was associated with: being male, being white, being generally healthy, trusting most in a primary care physician to provide advice, not knowing someone who had contracted the illness, believing you know a lot about the outbreak, not wishing to receive additional information about the outbreak and possessing worse factual knowledge about the outbreak than other people.
Conclusions
In future disease outbreaks merely providing factual information is unlikely to engage people who are sceptical about the need to take action. Instead, messages which challenge their perceived knowledge and which present case studies of people who have been affected may prove more effective, especially when delivered through trusted channels.
Data from 39 UK telephone surveys conducted during the ‘swine flu’ pandemic were analysed (n = 42,420).
Scepticism was assessed by asking whether participants agreed that ‘too much fuss is being made about the risk of swine flu.’
Around half of respondents were sceptical about the risk of swine flu (55.1%).
Scepticism was associated with being white, healthy and male, and having high subjective knowledge about the outbreak.
Challenging perceived knowledge may improve communication with sceptical groups in future.
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