Kiah, Savannah Kiah Siew, Chia, Jonathan Lpuis, Mahendran, Rathi, and Yu, Junhong (2022) Older adults’ perceptions of government handling of COVID-19: Predictors of protective behaviors from lockdown to post-lockdown. PLoS ONE, 17 (2). e0263039.

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Abstract

Background

Distrust, and more broadly, public perception of government’s handling of a crisis, has been a widely studied topic within health crisis research and suggests that these perceptions are significantly associated with the behavior of its citizens.

Purpose

To understand which aspects of the public’s perception of government handling of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted engagement of protective behaviors among older adults, who are the most vulnerable to COVID-19.

Methods

Participants were recruited from an ongoing biopsychosocial study on aging amongst community-dwelling older adults. There were two rounds of data collection, during the national lockdown and post-lockdown. The average length of follow-up was 5.88 months. N = 421 completed the first round of data collection and N = 318 subsequently completed the second round of questionnaires.

Results

During the lockdown, perceptions that pandemic-related measures in place were sufficient, effective, timely, provided a sense of safety, important information was easily accessible, and government handling of the pandemic could be trusted, were found to significantly predict engagement in protective behaviors. During post-lockdown, only perceptions that measures in place were sufficient, provided a sense of safety, and important information was easily accessible, remained significant predictors. The perception that COVID-19 measures were clear and easy to understand now became a significant predictor.

Conclusions

Public perceptions of government handling of the pandemic predicted engagement in protective behaviors but were less important during post-lockdown. To effectively engage older adults in protective behavior, our findings suggest for pandemic-related information to be accessible, introducing timely safety measures, and having easy-to-understand instructions for nuanced measures.

Item ID:	91278
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1932-6203
Copyright Information:	© 2022 Kiah Hui Siew et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Date Deposited:	22 Apr 2026 02:19
FoR Codes:	52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5203 Clinical and health psychology > 520304 Health psychology @ 50% 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5201 Applied and developmental psychology > 520106 Psychology of ageing @ 50%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280112 Expanding knowledge in the health sciences @ 100%
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