Tekijät

• Kulha, Katariina (University of Turku)
• Leino, Mikko (University of Turku)
• Setälä, Maija (University of Turku)
• Ylisalo, Juha (University of Turku)

Asiasanat

COVID-19, bacterial and virus diseases, dissemination of information, evaluation, government, health advice, human rights, public health, regulations, social attitudes

Sisällön kuvaus

The data consists of three different surveys to explore the views of Finns on the acceptability of the government's COVID-19 actions before and after the expert hearing and citizen deliberation. The aim of the survey was to find out how the expert hearing and deliberative citizen discussion affect citizens' perceptions of the acceptability of the government's COVID-19 actions. The citizen deliberation is part of the research project "Preparing for the next waves: towards cooperative and legitimate pandemic governance in Europe" under the PALO project.

At the beginning of the survey, respondents were asked if they would be willing to participate in a two-day citizen deliberation. The next step was to ask respondents about their views on the restrictions on the fight against COVID-19 and the various recommendations and regulations issued by the authorities. Respondents were also asked how closely they had followed the news about the COVID-19 in various media. They were also asked about their confidence in the various sources of information on the COVID-19 situation. Respondents were then asked about their feelings on the COVID-19 situation and their factual knowledge of the COVID-19 situation. At the end of the first questionnaire, the respondents were asked for background information, such as their political party preference.

The participants who went on to the citizen deliberation were randomly divided in advance into two different groups, with group 1 hearing experts in human rights and social sciences on the first day and experts in health and public health on the second day, while group 2 heard experts in the opposite order. This experimental set-up was used to investigate whether the participants' opinions on COVID-19 actions would be influenced by the field of expertise and the order in which the experts were heard. After each day, the participants answered a questionnaire, which asked some of the same questions as the first questionnaire. The questionnaires also asked, for example, how much more the respondents felt they knew about the limitations and recommendations on COVID-19 prevention after these discussions. Respondents were also asked to rate the effectiveness of the small group discussions.

Background variables included the respondent's gender, type of residence, highest level of education, economic activity, household income, household size, number of children and political party preference. For those who participated in the citizen deliberation, the additional background variables are year of birth and NUTS3 region of residence.