The Corona Insights team wanted to know how Coloradans were holding up during shelter in place, so we conducted a survey! We asked residents about a broad range of topics, including their overall wellbeing, challenges, concerns, community response, and others.

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As a part of our blog series recapping results from our COVID-19 Experience Survey, we wanted to take a look at how Colorado residents have been gauging the State and community response to the pandemic and see what residents themselves have been doing to help others.

First, we asked residents how they compared the COVID-19 response of Colorado’s political leaders, businesses, and residents to that of other states. Overall, Coloradans viewed these entities more favorably than negatively with greater proportions of the state population saying these groups did better than other states than those who said Colorado had done worse. However, a plurality of respondents thought that Colorado’s political leaders and residents have responded about as well as other states.

Next, we wanted to gauge how Coloradans viewed an expanded list of entities’ efforts to slow the spread of the virus. We gave respondents options to assess a series of groups on a 5-point scale from Needing to do a lot less to Needing to do a lot more to slow the spread of COVID-19. Few respondents selected the two options associated with needing to do less, so we have consolidated them for ease of interpretation below.

Strong majorities of Coloradans, between 65%-71%, said their local friends and family, healthcare providers, and nonprofits were doing the right amount to slow the spread of COVID-19. About half of residents thought that State (52%) and local (53%) government were doing the right amount, with substantial minorities, 38% and 40% respectively, saying each needed to do more. A majority (64%) of Coloradans wanted to see more from the federal government.

Next, we wanted to know where Coloradans were getting information about the virus. We asked respondents what websites they had visited for news or updates related to COVID-19. Coloradans most frequently said they had visited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website (43%) and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment website (31%).

Finally, we asked Coloradans how they were helping others in the community in response to COVID-19. Three out of four residents said they were practicing social distancing when outside of their house. More than a third of Coloradans said they were making an effort to support local businesses (39%) and checking in on or helping neighbors (37%).

Keep an eye out for new posts as we unpack more findings from our COVID-19 Experience Survey.

The survey was fielded between April 7-9, 2020. Resulting data were cleaned and coded. Responses were weighted to represent the state of Colorado by geography and key demographic characteristics from the 2018 American Community Survey.

For further inquiry, please contact Corona Insights.