Singapore Residents' View on Covid-19 Information Dissemination: Risk Communication and Public Trust Study

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine how COVID-19 information was communicatedand disseminated to the Singapore respondents. Aspects looked into were concepts and theories of risk communication, the respondent’s primary channel of information, the public’s level of trust towards the government, their evaluation of how COVID-19 communications were received and their assessment of the risk messages from the government.

This study was carried out in Singapore using a survey questionnaire. Due to the strict data policy in Singapore and the slim chance of getting all the list of the members of the population, one of the limitations of the study was the use of non-probability sampling. The participants then, did not have an equal chance of participating in the survey. To delimit the selection bias however, selection criteria was included such as the socio-demographic profile specifying location. To increase reliability, 114 respondents from the 5 regions in Singapore, namely, Central Region, North Region, North-east Region, East Region and West Region were recruited for this study. Hence, results were not generalizable considering that Singapore as an island city-state that has a population of about 5.6 Million (MOH, 2018).