The Austrian Corona Panel Project: monitoring individual and societal dynamics amidst the COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

Systematic and openly accessible data are vital to the scientific understanding of the social, political, and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article introduces the Austrian Corona Panel Project (ACPP), which has generated a unique, publicly available data set from late March 2020 onwards. ACPP has been designed to capture the social, political, and economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Austrian population on a weekly basis. The thematic scope of the study covers several core dimensions related to the individual and societal impact of the COVID-19 crisis. The panel survey has a sample size of approximately 1500 respondents per wave. It contains questions that are asked every week, complemented by domain-specific modules to explore specific topics in more detail. The article presents details on the data collection process, data quality, the potential for analysis, and the modalities of data access pertaining to the first ten waves of the study.

From populism to the “plandemic”: why populists believe in COVID-19 conspiracies

“…Second, while it might appear that right-wing populist governments have particularly struggled with fighting the pandemic, our results suggest that claiming that "coronavirus could kill off populism" 5 might be too short-sighted. As acceptance of COVID-19 mitigation measures is also declining in countries led by non-populist governments (Kittel et al 2020b), and as (right-wing) populist leaders have monopolized on discontent with COVID-19 policies and related conspiracy belief, there is reason to believe that support for populist challengers in these countries could even increase in the course of 2020 and beyond. Third, the results highlight that effective communication about COVID-19 may not only try to correct existing misperceptions (Lyons, Merola, and Reifler 2019) but to break the mechanism that leads to these misperceptions.…”

“…Respondents in this panel are selected based on the following key demographics: age, gender, gender x age, region (province), educational level, and municipality size. The quota sample was structured to closely represent the Austrian population (Kittel et al 2020a(Kittel et al , 2020b. We focus on 823 respondents who took part in Wave 6 and Wave 9 of the study, as these waves provide the measures of populist attitudes, trust in political institutions, trust in science as well as several items of conspiracy belief.…”

Policy-Relevant Attitudes Toward COVID-19 Vaccination: Associations With Demography, Health Risk, and Social and Political Factors

“…Moreover, in the absence of vaccination reminder systems, direct incentives, or vaccine mandates, the Austrian immunization program remains fragmented. Beyond these systemic issues, large-scale surveys reveal that there is only limited trust in the effectiveness of vaccines, positioning Austria at the lower end of the scale, ranking national populations according to their vaccine confidence (34).…”

The first 8 weeks of the Austrian SARS-CoV-2 epidemic

“…In different waves of a public opinion survey starting 27-30 March and repeated 3 times during the first 8 weeks (3-8 April, 10-16 April, 17-21 April), the Austrian public opinion on the implemented public health measures was examined. The public in general had high acceptance rates, the highest level shown at the end of March when 71% of the respondents found the measures appropriate [64]. Throughout the four waves of surveys, the acceptance remained high with a slight increase in respondents deeming the measures "rather too extreme" or "too extreme" towards 21 April.…”

“…Throughout the four waves of surveys, the acceptance remained high with a slight increase in respondents deeming the measures "rather too extreme" or "too extreme" towards 21 April. Furthermore, over 60% of the respondents continuously rated the measures to be effective [64].…”