Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have huge impacts on society that will affect the way we live for years to come. These changes will have effects on public health, wellbeing, the economy and the effective function of national and devolved governments. Critically, we also expect that the extent to which people living in the UK are willing to place their trust in governments and their decision-making will be closely linked across time to the changing successes and failures of the COVID-19 response.

In order to support effective and locally relevant communication and engagement strategies for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, this project conducts rapid social science assessments of the impact of COVID-19 (and associated control measures) on attitudes and behaviours towards the public health response. During the first wave of COVID-19 in the UK (April 2020) we carried out the first of these surveys. A summary of the survey’s findings can be found below, along with links to academic research papers that our team has published using this data.

During the second wave of COVID-19, we are expanding on the work of the first-round survey In this phase of the project we have updated our survey questions to reflect current pandemic response priorities.

You can take part in the second round of data collection by completing the survey here

Note that the summary results presented on this site are largely descriptive at this stage and will be subjected to rigorous scientific tests before any results are published in full in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Until our work is published, our data should be considered illustrative and subject to change. The results presented here are a draft document that makes no claims of being scientifically conclusive until further analysis has been completed.

Results from this and previous rounds of our COVID-19 surveys

Phase 2 (November-December 2020, COVID-19 Wave 2) [Data Not Yet Available]
Phase 1 (April-May 2020, COVID-19 Wave 1)

Published research

We’ve completed analysis on some of the data from the first phase of this study and our formal results can be viewed using the links below. All our research papers are open access.

Further information

Please click here for more information on the background of the study

To learn more about the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, click here

Ethics Statement

This research has received approval from the LSHTM research ethics committee (Reference 21846, amendment xxxxx). Enquiries should be directed to this email address

About the researchers

This research is being carried out by the LSHTM Global Health Analytics group, a multi-disciplinary team of scientists from LSHTM and University College London. The research team has extensive experience of performing social science, clinical and epidemiological studies during outbreaks.

The lead scientists of the study are Dr Shelley Lees (LSHTM, Co-PI), Dr Chrissy h Roberts (LSHTM, Co-PI)

The co-investigators of this work are Dr Hannah Brindle (LSHTM), Dr Luisa Enria (LSHTM), Dr Sham Lal (LSHTM), Dr Nina Rogers (University College London) and Naomi Waterlow (LSHTM).

Contact : The research team can be contacted here

The lead investigators can also be reached by mail at

Dr Chrissy h Roberts / Dr Shelley Lees
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, UK, WC1E 7HT

Acknowledgements

The study team would like to extend their thanks to the tens of thousands of people from around the UK who have taken part in our surveys and who by doing so contributed to the effort to control and minimise the impacts of COVID-19 in the UK