Tracking and modeling public perceptions toward the reality of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria

Abdullahi Yusuf, Nasiru Ibrahim Tambuwal, Hadiza Ahmad Gusau and Faruk Usman Maiyaki

The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 625-635

Abstract: The study tracked and modeled public perceptions toward the reality of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria over a 3 month period (10 May to 10 August 2020); 2580 Nigerians across the six geopolitical zones were selected to participate in the study. These participants were selected from various social media platforms and were requested to complete an online survey over a 3-month period. Data were analyzed in three phases: tracking, modeling, and forecasting. We first tracked the respondents’ perceptions in the form of a qualitative response, where seven thematic constructs emerged from content analysis. These constructs were confirmed in the modeling phase, using structural equation modeling after data transformation. The themes were forecast as a single construct to predict possible trends and patterns over the next 3 month period using an autoregressive integrated moving average. Our findings revealed that public perceptions toward the reality of COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria fall into seven thematic constructs: “scam,†“fake,†“politics,†“business venture,†“exaggeration,†“real,†and “real but manipulated.†These constructs show a steady trend with a random walk pattern, suggesting that perceptions toward the reality of COVID-19 in Nigeria will remain relatively unchanged over the next 3 month period. We recommend, among other things, that massive and intensive sensitization and awareness programs are needed to change the public mindset concerning the reality of the pandemic in Nigeria.

Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; public perceptions; tracking; modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15485129211016543 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joudef:v:19:y:2022:i:4:p:625-635

DOI: 10.1177/15485129211016543

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().