- Published
- 28 January 2021
- Journal article
Should we or should we not include confidence intervals in COVID-19 death forecasting? Evidence from a survey experiment
- Authors
- Source
- Political Studies Review
Full text
Abstract
Forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic entails a great deal of uncertainty. The same way that we would like electoral forecasters to systematically include their confidence intervals to account for such uncertainty, we assume that COVID-19-related forecasts should follow that norm. Based on literature on negative bias, we may expect the presence of uncertainty to affect citizens’ attitudes and behaviours, which would in turn have major implications on how we should present these sensitive forecasts. In this research we present the main findings of a survey experiment where citizens were exposed to a projection of the total number of deaths. We manipulated the exclusion (and inclusion) of graphically depicted confidence intervals in order to isolate the average causal effect of uncertainty. Our results show that accounting for uncertainty does not change (1) citizens’ perceptions of projections’ reliability, nor does it affect (2) their support for preventive public health measures. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. Disclaimer. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. This license is acceptable for Free Cultural Works. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Cite as
Daoust, J. & Bastien, F. 2021, 'Should we or should we not include confidence intervals in COVID-19 death forecasting? Evidence from a survey experiment', Political Studies Review, 19(2), pp. 302-310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920985686