Abstract:The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in various public health responses around the globe. Due to the devolved powers of the United Kingdom, the response has been centralized but simultaneously greatly differing across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The following article examines the governmental responses to the outbreak, the public health measures taken, data collection and statistics, protective equipment and bed capacity, the society’s response, and lastly, the easing of the l… Show more
“…The data were collected during the original lockdown; since then, government guidance changed multiple times (e.g. local lockdowns, Tier systems, ‘Stay Alert’) (Nartowski et al., 2020 ). New, more important determinants may have emerged in the wake of changing public mindset about more recent guidance.…”
Objective
Public adherence to COVID‐19‐related government guidance varied during the initial lockdown in the UK, but the determinants of public adherence to such guidance are unclear. We capture spontaneous reflections on adherence to UK government guidance from a representative UK sample, and use the TDF to identify key determinants of COVID‐related behaviours.
Design
The design was cross‐sectional.
Methods
Qualitative data were collected from a large sample of UK adults (
N =
2,252) via an online questionnaire as part of a wider survey about the UK public’s responses to the government’s COVID‐19‐related guidance. Summative content analysis was used to identify key guideline terms in the data, followed by latent analysis to interpret the underlying meanings behind the terms using the TDF as an analytical framework.
Results
Six TDF domains were identified in the data: Environmental Context and Resources; Beliefs about Consequences; Social Influences; Memory, Attention and Decision Processes; Emotion; and Knowledge. Although the samples were motivated and capable of adhering, limitations in their environments, resources, and social support mechanisms restricted behaviour. Self‐reported adherence was sensitive to positive and negative beliefs about the effectiveness of the measures, in addition to interpretations of the terms ‘essential’ and ‘necessary’ in the guidance.
Conclusions
Despite extensive structural obstacles to adherence, the majority of the British public were able to follow government COVID‐19‐related instructions, provided they had sufficient resources, social support, and positive perceptions about the effectiveness of the measures. Ambiguities surrounding key terminology in the guidance left room for interpretation, which may have contributed to non‐adherence.
“…The data were collected during the original lockdown; since then, government guidance changed multiple times (e.g. local lockdowns, Tier systems, ‘Stay Alert’) (Nartowski et al., 2020 ). New, more important determinants may have emerged in the wake of changing public mindset about more recent guidance.…”
Objective
Public adherence to COVID‐19‐related government guidance varied during the initial lockdown in the UK, but the determinants of public adherence to such guidance are unclear. We capture spontaneous reflections on adherence to UK government guidance from a representative UK sample, and use the TDF to identify key determinants of COVID‐related behaviours.
Design
The design was cross‐sectional.
Methods
Qualitative data were collected from a large sample of UK adults (
N =
2,252) via an online questionnaire as part of a wider survey about the UK public’s responses to the government’s COVID‐19‐related guidance. Summative content analysis was used to identify key guideline terms in the data, followed by latent analysis to interpret the underlying meanings behind the terms using the TDF as an analytical framework.
Results
Six TDF domains were identified in the data: Environmental Context and Resources; Beliefs about Consequences; Social Influences; Memory, Attention and Decision Processes; Emotion; and Knowledge. Although the samples were motivated and capable of adhering, limitations in their environments, resources, and social support mechanisms restricted behaviour. Self‐reported adherence was sensitive to positive and negative beliefs about the effectiveness of the measures, in addition to interpretations of the terms ‘essential’ and ‘necessary’ in the guidance.
Conclusions
Despite extensive structural obstacles to adherence, the majority of the British public were able to follow government COVID‐19‐related instructions, provided they had sufficient resources, social support, and positive perceptions about the effectiveness of the measures. Ambiguities surrounding key terminology in the guidance left room for interpretation, which may have contributed to non‐adherence.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Johnson had to admit the failure of his measures on several occasions and subsequently change policies. This paper analyses Johnson’s strategies of communicating failure, relying on a corpus of official statements and interviews dating from March 2020 to January 2021. Drawing on methods from corpus-assisted discourse analysis, his main strategies of communicating failure are analysed by identifying typical speech acts and classifying them according to Boin et al.’s accountability model (2017). Additionally, frequent frames are examined with relation to the narrative to which they contribute. Results show a tendency to avoid admitting policy failure and shirk responsibility, complemented by a common reference to the success of previous policies and the need for unity in crisis.
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