COLUMBUS – Ohioans came to feel very confident about how local and state officials were handling the COVID-19 pandemic even while their faith in the federal response was eroding.
According to two separate surveys conducted by researchers at Ohio State during March and April, 88 percent of Ohioans expressed a great deal of confidence in their state officials to control the pandemic, and confidence in local officials grew from 71 percent during the first interviews to 75 percent in the second round while confidence in the federal government’s response to the pandemic declined from 45 to 39 percent over the two surveys, said Elizabeth Cooksey, director of the Center for Human Resource Research at OSU and professor of sociology.
affected their behavior. (OSU Center for Human Resource Research)
The surveys also showed that Ohioans’ perceptions of the virus’ threat affected their behavior. By April, the vast majority of them said they were visiting the grocery store less often than before the outbreak and were taking more precautions. (See illustration)
The survey showed that Ohioans concerns about catching the virus decreased the more they knew about it while their fears of its health effects grew. The percentage of Ohioans who perceived they were at risk of catching the virus decreased while the same people were more likely to believe that, if they did get sick, the disease would seriously affect their health, Cooksey said.
“These results offer a unique perspective on Ohioans’ changing views and behaviors over the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Cooksey said.
In mid-March, 27 percent of Ohioans rated their risk of catching the virus as high or very high, but this dropped to 21 percent in early April, possibly reflect the uncertainty about the pandemic when the participants were first interviewed, Cooksey said.
Those who thought an infection would affect their health very or extremely seriously increased from 29 to 39 percent between the two surveys.
“By the second wave of interviews, they understood more about what they could do to protect themselves, many were staying at home, and they may have felt a little more control over their life,” Cooksey said.
The percentage of people aged 18 to 34 who said that the virus would “not at all seriously” affect them if they caught it dropped by more than half between the two surveys, from 21 to 8 percent, suggesting that group was listening to health experts, Cooksey said.
Some of the results came from 622 Ohio residents who answered the same survey questions twice: once between March 18 and 21 and again between April 2 and April 9. Other results come from only the April survey, which included 1,259 Ohioans.