Trust in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic: which factors matter most?

The objective of this paper was to determine the key factors underlying trust in light of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Participants were recruited from ten countries around the world and asked to complete a two-part questionnaire. The first part of the study asked participants to rate their country's healthcare system on a scale from 1-5, according to ten trust-related factors (Butler 1991), translated specifically to pertain to healthcare. The second part of the questionnaire asked participants to rate their country's healthcare system on a scale from 1-5, according to 4 key pillars of trust: benevolence, reliability, competence and predictability. According to participants' ratings, correlation analyses were run between the trust factors and trust pillars. These ratings were aggregated per country to determine how impactful each factor was in predicting individuals' trust. Countries were grouped by geographic region to arrive at localized, international comparisons of trust relationships. To determine statistical significance, correlation results were subsequently converted to z-scores and compared to both global and regional means. Results determined that honesty, consistency and reasonableness were the most impactful factors underlying trust across the entire population. All other findings are detailed in the main text. With this study, we were able to determine the most impactful factors underlying trust, both at a global and national level. We were also able to determine intraregional differences in trust patterns across Northern Europe, Southern Europe, North America and Asia. We motivate the research of trust forward by better understanding its key underlying factors, globally and nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]