Characterizing public perceptions of social and cultural impacts in policy decisions.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Dieckmann NF
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8214679 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Stringent containment and closure policies have been widely implemented by governments to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Yet, such policies have significant impacts on people’s emotions and mental well-being. Here, we study the effects of pandemic containment policies on public sentiment in Singapore. We computed daily sentiment values scaled from −1 to 1, using high-frequency data of ∼240,000 posts from highly followed public Facebook groups during January to November 2020. The lockdown in April saw a 0.1 unit rise in daily average sentiment, followed by a 0.2 unit increase with partially lifting of lockdown in June, and a 0.15 unit fall after further easing of restrictions in August. Regarding the impacts of specific containment measures, a 0.13 unit fall in sentiment was associated with travel restrictions, whereas a 0.18 unit rise was related to introducing a facial covering policy at the start of the pandemic. A 0.15 unit fall in sentiment was linked to restrictions on public events, post lock-down. Virus infection, wearing masks, salary, and jobs were the chief concerns found in the posts. A 2 unit increase in these concerns occurred even when some restrictions were eased in August 2020. During pandemics, monitoring public sentiment and concerns through social media supports policymakers in multiple ways. First, the method given here is a near real-time scalable solution to study policy impacts. Second, it aids in data-driven and evidence-based revision of existing policies and implementation of similar policies in the future. Third, it identifies public concerns following policy changes, addressing which can increase trust in governments and improve public sentiment.
| S-EPMC9171635 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPharmaceuticals are an integral component of health care systems worldwide, thus, regulatory weaknesses in governance of the pharmaceutical system negatively impact health outcomes especially in developing countries 1. Nigeria is one of a number of countries whose pharmaceutical system has been impacted by corruption and has struggled to curtail the production and trafficking of substandard drugs. In 2001, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) underwent an organizational restructuring resulting in reforms to reduce counterfeit drugs and better regulate pharmaceuticals 2. Despite these changes, there is still room for improvement. This study assessed the perceived level of transparency and potential vulnerability to corruption that exists in four essential areas of Nigeria's pharmaceutical sector: registration, procurement, inspection (divided into inspection of ports and of establishments), and distribution.MethodsStandardized questionnaires were adapted from the World Health Organization assessment tool and used in semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the public and private pharmaceutical system. The responses to the questions were tallied and converted to scores on a numerical scale where lower scores suggested greater vulnerability to corruption and higher scores suggested lower vulnerability.ResultsThe overall score for Nigeria's pharmaceutical system was 7.4 out of 10, indicating a system that is marginally vulnerable to corruption. The weakest links were the areas of drug registration and inspection of ports. Analysis of the qualitative results revealed that the perceived level of corruption did not always match the qualitative evidence.ConclusionDespite the many reported reforms instituted by NAFDAC, the study findings suggest that facets of the pharmaceutical system in Nigeria remain fairly vulnerable to corruption. The most glaring deficiency seems to be the absence of conflict of interest guidelines which, if present and consistently administered, limit the promulgation of corrupt practices. Other major contributing factors are the inconsistency in documentation of procedures, lack of public availability of such documentation, and inadequacies in monitoring and evaluation. What is most critical from this study is the identification of areas that still remain permeable to corruption and, perhaps, where more appropriate checks and balances are needed from the Nigerian government and the international community.
| S-EPMC2775729 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Effective designation of Protected Areas (PAs) requires the careful consideration of their social impacts as these are perceived by people. These refer to a variety of issues such as the distribution of power, social equity, social relations and more importantly the impact of PAs on human wellbeing. A number of studies have emerged in the past decade aiming to capture social impacts of PAs across the world through non-monetary assessments taking into consideration people's perceptions. Although Europe is the region with the largest in proportion number of Protected Areas across the world it is also a region with very limited scientific evidence on this topic. As the European Union is preparing to implement its new Biodiversity Strategyto ipkmplement this paper aims to provide the first comprehensive review of the literature regarding social impacts of European PAs and highlight new directions for current policy frameworks in the region. The paper focuses on the perceived non-economic social costs and benefits of PAs and identifies 7 key categories of social impacts. We propose that policy planning for biodiversity conservation in Europe should incorporate subjective assessments of social costs and benefits with the aim to achieve an increase of benefits for people and their equal distribution across social groups.
| S-EPMC7729820 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ImportanceDespite broad public support for gun safety policies, minimal policy implementation has occurred.ObjectiveTo investigate factors that encourage greater private support for and public action on gun safety policy.Design, setting, and participantsThree studies were conducted: a public opinion survey (Study 1) was conducted from January 8 to 22, 2019, and 2 experiments (Studies 2 and 3) were conducted from August 27 to October 17, 2019, and April 15 to 21, 2020, respectively. Adults living in the US were eligible to participate in Studies 1 and 3. Students 18 years and older participating in a research experience program were eligible to participate in Study 2. Study 1 was administered online by Ipsos, a market research company. A nationally representative sample of 1000 US adults was obtained from Ipsos' online KnowledgePanel, of whom 508 completed the public opinion survey. For Study 2, which was conducted in a university laboratory, 354 participants were recruited from a university research pool, all of whom completed the study. Study 3 was administered online by the market research company YouGov, which identified 727 US gun owners from its opt-in panel, from which it constructed a census-matched sample of 400 participants.ExposuresParticipants read a statement about the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Content was manipulated as a 2 (corrective information vs no corrective information) × 2 (system changeable vs system not changeable) between-subjects factorial design with random assignment. The corrective information included polling data highlighting widespread support among gun owners for several gun safety policies. System changeable described gun safety policies passed by Florida's legislature.Main outcomes and measuresMain outcomes were support for gun safety policies and public disclosure of support.ResultsThe 3 studies included a total of 1262 participants (Study 1: 508 participants; weighted mean [SD] age, 47.7 [17.5] years; 261.9 women [51.6%]; 82.5 Hispanic [16.2%] and 60.3 Black [11.9%]; Study 2: 354 participants; mean [SD] age, 20.0 [2.3] years; 232 women [65.9%]; 100 Asian [28.3%] and 37 Black [10.5%]; Study 3: 400 participants; weighted mean [SD] age, 52.1 [16.4] years; 187.3 women [46.8%]; 295.5 White [73.9%], 44.5 Hispanic [11.1%], and 32.4 Black [8.1%]). Study 1 found that 63% to 91% of gun owners and 83% to 93% of non-gun owners supported key gun safety policies, yet both groups significantly underestimated gun owners' support for these policies by between 12% and 31%. Studies 2 and 3 found that exposure to corrective information was associated with a small increase in support for 2 gun safety policies of between 4% and 15%, both in terms of participants' privately held beliefs and the beliefs they would be willing to share publicly.Conclusions and relevanceThis survey study found that many US adults failed to recognize that most gun owners support key gun safety policies. Correcting this misperception was associated with greater private and public support for gun safety policy.
| S-EPMC7756237 | biostudies-literature
Project description:See https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/find-a-clinical-trial/trial-looking-what-people-think-information-they-receive-nhs-bowel-cancer-screening-programme
| 2424656 | ecrin-mdr-crc
Project description:Starting from 1 October 2021, Australia requires a prescription for purchasing nicotine vaping products. On 29 October 2021, the UK provided a guideline to treat e-cigarettes as medical products. This study aims to understand public perceptions of the prescription policy in Australia and the UK on Twitter. Tweets related to e-cigarettes from 20 September 2021 to 31 December 2021 were collected through Twitter streaming API. We adopted both a human and machine learning model to identify a total of 1795 tweets from the UK and Australia related to the prescription policy. We classified them into pro-policy, anti-policy, and neutral-to-policy groups, and further characterized tweets into different topics. Compared to Australia, the proportion of pro-policy tweets in the UK was significantly higher (19.43% vs. 10.92%, p < 0.001), while the proportion of anti-policy tweets was significantly lower (43.4% vs. 50.09%, p = 0.003). The main topics for different attitudes towards the prescription policy between the two countries showed some significant differences, for example, "help quit smoking" in the UK and "health effect of e-cigarettes" in Australia for the positive attitude, "economic effect" in the UK and "preventing smoking cessation" in Australia for the negative attitude, which reflected different public concerns. The findings might provide valuable guidance for other countries to implement a similar policy in the future.
| S-EPMC9915110 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Anthropological literature on health beliefs and practices related to COVID-19 is scarce, particularly in low and middle-income countries. We conducted a qualitative research on perceptions of COVID-19 among slum residents of Dhaka, Bangladesh from November 2020 through January, 2021. Methods included in-depth interviews and photo elicitation with community residents. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Results show scientific explanations of COVID-19 conflicted with interviewees' cultural and spiritual beliefs such as: coronavirus is a disease of rich, sinful people; the virus is a curse from Allah to punish sinners. Interviewees rejected going to hospitals in favor of home remedies, and eschewed measures such as mask-wearing or social distancing instead preferring to follow local beliefs. We have highlighted a gap between community beliefs about the pandemic and science-led interventions proposed by health professionals. For public health policy to be more effective it requires a deeper understanding of and response to community perceptions.
| S-EPMC9099403 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In Indonesia, tourism has become a promising major economic sector, particularly because of its contributions toward developing the economy and creating employment opportunities for local communities with rich coastal ecosystems. However, the balance between the environmental, social, and economic realms has come into question, as unsustainable tourism practices continue to be promoted in Indonesia. To address such challenges, it is important to identify tourism impacts and provide sustainable policies and plans. Communities often record tourism impacts through their perceptions and act as important stakeholders in the process of sustainable tourism development. We examined tourism impacts on coastal ecosystems in Karimunjawa from the perspective of local communities. More comprehensively, we investigated their perceptions from three perspectives: socio-cultural, economic, and environmental. The study results revealed that the respondents held positive perceptions about tourism's impact on socio-cultural and economic sectors and negative perceptions about its impact in the environmental domain. A chi-square test and Spearman's correlation analysis indicated that the respondents' educational attainment and tourism involvement influenced their perceptions on these issues. The current study results could be used as a baseline reference for contextualizing sustainable tourism plans regarding small island ecosystems in Indonesia.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11852-022-00852-9.
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Project description:Public Natural Resource Management (NRM) agencies operate in complex social-ecological domains. These complexities proliferate unpredictably therefore investigating and supporting the ability of public agencies to respond effectively is increasingly important. However, understanding how public NRM agencies innovate and restructure to negotiate the range of particular complexities they face is an under researched field. One particular conceptualisation of the social-ecological complexities facing NRM agencies that is of growing influence is the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus. Yet, as a tool to frame and understand those complexities it has limitations. Specifically, it overlooks how NRMs respond institutionally to these social-ecological complexities in the context of economic and organisational challenges-thus creating a gap in the literature. Current debates in public administration can be brought to bear here. Using an organisational cultures approach, this paper reports on a case study with a national NRM agency to investigate how they are attempting to transform institutionally to respond to complexity in challenging times. The research involved 12 elite interviews with senior leaders from Natural Resources Wales, (NRW) and investigated how cultural narratives are being explicitly and implicitly constructed and mobilised to this end. The research identified four distinct and sequential cultural narratives: collaboration, communication, trust, and empowerment where each narrative supported the delivery of different dimensions of NRW's social-ecological complexity mandate. Counter to the current managerialist approaches in public administration, these results suggest that the empowerment of expert bureaucrats is important in responding effectively to complexity.
| S-EPMC7338285 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has had broad impacts on individuals, families and communities which will continue to require multidimensional responses from service providers, program developers, and policy makers.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to use Life Course theory to understand and imagine public health and policy responses to the multiple and varied impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on different groups.Methods"The Cost of COVID-19" was a research study carried out in Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington counties in South Eastern Ontario, Canada, between June and December 2020. Data included 210 micronarrative stories collected from community members, and 31 in-depth interviews with health and social service providers. Data were analyzed using directed content analysis to explore the fit between data and the constructs of Life Course theory.ResultsSocial pathways were significantly disrupted by changes to education and employment, as well as changes to roles which further altered anticipated pathways. Transitions were by and large missed, creating a sense of loss. While some respondents articulated positive turning points, most of the turning points reported were negative, including fundamental changes to relationships, family structure, education, and employment with lifelong implications. Participants' trajectories varied based on principles including when they occurred in their lifespan, the amount of agency they felt or did not feel over circumstances, where they lived (rural versus urban), what else was going on in their lives at the time the pandemic struck, how their lives were connected with others, as well as how the pandemic impacted the lives of those dear to them. An additional principle, that of Culture, was felt to be missing from the Life Course theory as currently outlined.ConclusionsA Life Course analysis may improve our understanding of the multidimensional long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health countermeasures. This analysis could help us to anticipate services that will require development, training, and funding to support the recovery of those who have been particularly affected. Resources needed will include education, mental health and job creation supports, as well as programs that support the development of individual and community agency.
| S-EPMC9757550 | biostudies-literature