Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Oct;18(10):1006-1017.
doi: 10.30773/pi.2021.0220. Epub 2021 Oct 8.

A Comparative Study of Social Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan

Angela Lo  1 , Bang-Ook Jun  2 , Vincent Shieh  3 , Clay M Starlin  4 , Satoshi Sugahara  5 , Dian-Jeng Li  6   7
Affiliations

A Comparative Study of Social Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Republic of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan

Angela Lo et al. Psychiatry Investig. 2021 Oct.

Abstract

Objective: The frequency of various disasters has become a 21st century global crisis. The biological-disaster of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) gave rise to a multi-dimensional global impact. The 25 items of Societal Influences Survey Questionnaire (SISQ) was developed to assess various categories of social influence during the pandemic. This study compares the SISQ scores of Taiwan, Republic of Korea (Korea) and Japan.

Methods: Persons living in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were recruited and evaluated through an SISQ online survey. The SISQ is composed of 25 items each with a 4-point Likert scale. The SISQ assesses the following six factors: self-restraint, social impact, government policy, social cost, concern of infection, and awareness of information. A principal factor analysis and reliability (Cronbach's alpha) were performed to validate the SISQ. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc analysis was conducted to explore the differences between groups.

Results: The SISQ had acceptable reliabilities, and accounted for 58.86% of the variance. The significance for ANOVA with post-hoc analysis showed that scores of self-restraints ranked highest in Japan followed by Taiwan and Korea. Taiwanese scored lower than other nations regarding the concern of infection. Koreans scored higher in awareness of information than the other two nations. The effect of age and marital status were also estimated.

Conclusion: The SISQ comprehensively evaluate multiple domains of social influence, and it manifests the divergence of social impacts across the three nations.

Keywords: Biological disaster; COVID-19; National comparisons; Social impact; Survey research.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

References

    1. Lo HA, Huang JJ, Chen CC, Tsai D, Chou FH, Shieh V. Community-based epidemic prevention in Taiwan: combating the coronavirus disease-2019 crisis. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2020;14:e15–e16. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Eichenberger R, Hegselmann R, Savage DA, Stadelmann D, Torgler B. Certified coronavirus immunity as a resource and strategy to cope with pandemic costs. Kyklos. 2020;73:464–474.
    1. Lo A, Huang JJ, Chen CC, Chou FH, Shieh V. From biological safety to social safety: how Taiwan’s community centered prevention program controlled the COVID-19 outbreak. J Glob Health. 2020;10:020303. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Oh J, Lee JK, Schwarz D, Ratcliffe HL, Markuns JF, Hirschhorn LR. National response to COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea and lessons learned for other countries. Health Syst Reform. 2020;6:e1753464. - PubMed
    1. Chen H, Shi L, Zhang Y, Wang X, Sun G. A cross-country core strategy comparison in China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea during the early COVID-19 pandemic. Global Health. 2021;17:22. - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources