Provision of Public Opinion Surveys in Europe to aid Research into Misperceptions

The project will field nationally representative public opinion surveys research in at least 8 European countries to measure the prevalence and correlates of misperceptions about immigration, vaccination, and climate change. This work package is necessary to assessing the extent and variation of public misperceptions in Europe, as previously indicated, on three specific issue areas that cover distinct policy domains: immigration (politics), vaccines and vaccination (health), and climate change (science).

By looking at misperceptions across Europe, it is possible to examine a much richer set of potential individual and institutional level factors that may limit or exacerbate the spread of misperceptions, and give us a better understanding of the contextual factors that condition receptivity to corrective messages. But just as importantly, it provides an opportunity to collect public opinion data on issues that pose potential risk to the health and wellbeing of the EU as an institution and to European populations more generally.

More specifically, this work package will use survey research to ask Europeans their factual beliefs and opinions about issues where there are likely to misperceptions of significant consequence (politics, health, and science). Additional survey questions will be used to collect data about factors that might be related to misperceptions- everything from demographics (e.g. education) to political variables (e.g. ideology or partisan identification) to well-validated psychological constructs (e.g., need for cognition, need to evaluate, or openness) to everyday behaviour (media consumption). With these data, it will be possible to start examining the prevalence of misperceptions overall, as well as how they vary across different segments of the population.