Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vital importance and impact of human behaviour on viral transmission. During 2020, large amounts of global survey data were collected and made freely available to help the response. Many teams responding to the pandemic lack capacity to interpret and apply behavioural data. A collaboration of the World Health Organization’s Behavioural Insights team and UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change designed and piloted two templates to enable survey data use during the first months of the pandemic. The first template documents key behaviours, thoughts and emotions related to the pandemic, with social interactions and population adherence to behavioural guidelines. The second template enables countries to formulate questions or issues that they would like behavioural data to address. This collaborative process applying behavioural science theory produced structured templates to enable the organisation, interpretation, sharing and application of survey data to inform policy and practice in different country contexts.
Highlights
The December 2019 outbreak of the respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 led to its characterisation as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020 (Li et al, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a)
Human behaviour is at the heart of viral transmission (Michie & West, 2020a)
A collaboration between behaviour scientists, communications experts and pandemic responders resulted in two templates to allow users to apply behavioural theory to data and contribute to a behaviourally informed public health pandemic response
Summary
The December 2019 outbreak of the respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 led to its characterisation as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020 (Li et al, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020a). Human behaviour is at the heart of viral transmission (Michie & West, 2020a). Human behaviour is at the heart of breaking viral transmission through effective delivery of public health measures, clinical management of patients, and deployment of vaccines and treatment (Flaxman et al, 2020; Islam et al, 2020; World Health Organization, 2020b). There is usually no single solution to wicked problems, and they require expertise from multiple disciplines through academic-practitioner collaborations to find a way forward (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Waddell, 2016). Long-term resolutions to wicked problems involve many complex processes and a lack of understanding of vital aspects of the problem, such as human behaviour, can undermine efforts (Michie et al, 2015)
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