Table 3 Evidence assessments for two claims on trust and leadership
From: A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19
Claim (number) | Evidence | Level | Direction | Effect size | Summary of evidence | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Identifying trusted sources (for example, local, religious or community leaders) that are credible to different audiences to share public health messages can be effective (2) | General support for the claim with a medium effect size from survey data in different samples and some applications in the real world. The core claim is generally supported by the evidence | Replicated real-world or field study evidence | Positive | Medium | Articles reviewed: 40 | Sample range: 372–1,429,453 | |
Average review time: 19 h (spread over 2–10 days) | Mean sample: 46,892.5 | Median sample: 1,765 | |||||
Leaders and the media might try to promote cooperative behaviour by emphasizing that cooperating is the right thing to do and that other people are already cooperating (3) | Evidence for the claim stems mostly from correlational data and few experimental studies reporting small but rather inconsistent effects across contexts and outcomes | Empirical evidence (such as surveys, laboratory experiments and controlled settings) | Positive | Small | Articles reviewed: 16 | Sample range: 52–484,239 | |
Average review time: 13 h (spread over 8–10 days) | Mean sample: 40,719.5 | Median sample: 1,004 | |||||
