Background: COVID-19 is a rapidly developing threat to most people in the United States and abroad. The behaviors of the public are important to understand, as they may have a tremendous impact on the course of this novel coronavirus pandemic.
Objective: This study intends to assess the US population's perception and knowledge of the virus as a threat and the behaviors of the general population in response.
Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted with random volunteers recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, an internet crowdsourcing service, on March 24, 2020.
Results: A total of 969 participants met the inclusion criteria. It was found that the perceived severity of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly differed between age groups (P<.001) and men and women (P<.001). A majority of study participants were actively adhering to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Conclusions: Though many participants identified COVID-19 as a threat, many failed to place themselves appropriately in the correct categories with respect to risk. This may indicate a need for additional public education for appropriately defining the risk of this novel pandemic.
Keywords: Amazon Mechanical Turk; COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2; behavior; crowdsourcing; education; impact; pandemic; perception; public opinion; severity; survey.
©Orr Shauly, Gregory Stone, Daniel Gould. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 26.11.2020.