RAPID: Collaborative Research: Tracking and Explaining Americans' response to the Ebola outbreak

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary This project examines the American public response to the current Ebola outbreak, which started in rural Guinea, West Africa, in December 2013. By October 2014, a handful of Americans had been infected with Ebola, including a nurse who came into contact with a Liberian national being treated in a Dallas hospital. This project asks how public opinion is shaped by (1) the policy responses offered by leading politicians and (2) the framing of Ebola as not just a public health issue but also an immigration issue. In particular, we examine Americans' knowledge of Ebola, their attitudes toward immigration, and their confidence in the U.S. government to respond to the Ebola outbreak. We measure how different types of information influence people's knowledge, attitudes and identify which factors drive U.S. public opinion toward this issue. For example, some participants are primed to think about an American as a potential source for Ebola transmission in America, while others are primed to think about an African as the source. The project also measures how these different frames affect respondents' willingness to donate to a U.S.-based charity fighting Ebola in West Africa. Learning how Americans respond to different frames of the Ebola crisis, and to the policy responses offered by politicians, not just by capturing their responses to survey questions but also determining their willingness to donate money to a non-partisan, non-profit healthcare organization, will better our understanding of the factors that shape attitudes and behaviors toward health, immigration and charitable giving. Technical Summary To study how issue framing and partisanship influence knowledge, attitudes, and behavior toward a public health epidemic, immigration, and the administration's response, we use a survey experiment administered online by a professional survey firm. The survey has four sections: pretreatment questions, such as the respondent's gender, age, education level, partisanship identity, and previous knowledge of and attitudes toward Ebola; the random administration of the treatment (an Ebola Fact Sheet); the collection of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes; and a manipulation check. The treatment (our Ebola Fact Sheet ) provides key facts about the Ebola virus and the recent outbreak, plus one of five randomly assigned pieces of information that allows us to assess the causal effect of issue-framing and of partisanship on the American response to this crisis. One of the novel aspects of our study is that it collects information not only on individual Americans' attitudes, but also on their behavior. Specifically, our survey instrument includes a question that provides respondents with the choice to donate part of their bonus survey compensation to a nonprofit, non-partisan organization currently fighting Ebola in West Africa. Finally, a manipulation check is designed to verify the extent to which our survey respondents comply with the treatment. This proposal was submitted prior to NSF 15-006 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) on the Ebola Virus, but is funded consistent with the priorities identified in the DCL.