Public attitudes to coronavirus: May summary

Overall trends and key points

There are a number of trends observable across the polling data:

• Perceived personal threat from the virus has reduced over the month. Similarly, there has been a decline in the perceptions of the health risk of the virus.
• Across some measures, attitudes appear to have shifted towards the end of May. In particular, respondents appear to be slightly more optimistic about the future, and an increased proportion think that movement restrictions should be lifted and businesses reopened (although there is still a great deal of caution).
• Levels of anxiety remain relatively high and stable, although there has been a decrease in worry about Coronavirus specifically. There has also been a slight improvement in happiness levels.
• Claimed compliance with suppression measures was high and remained relatively stable in May, albeit with falls in some measures at the latest survey wave. A minority report wearing a face covering but this has increased since the start of May.
• The NHS and Scottish Government were consistently rated highly in terms of doing a good job to contain the virus in May.
• Around half of respondents in employment felt comfortable returning to work in the next month, whilst two thirds reported that they felt anxious about resuming normal activities.