NISRA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Opinion Survey January – March 2022 Results

Date published: 12 May 2022

Topics: Coronavirus (COVID-19) statistics, About the Central Survey Unit

The latest set of results from the NISRA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Opinion survey were published today

This bulletin was published today by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency.

The main report and findings are available on the NISRA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Opinion Survey page.

Key findings

Approximately, two fifths of people (41%) interviewed in the period January – March 2022 said that they were worried about the effect Coronavirus (COVID-19) was having on their lives. This finding is significantly lower than in the previous nine months, when 54% of people were worried about the effect Coronavirus (COVID-19) was having on their lives.
In the period January – March 2022, a decreasing proportion of people (34%) reported that they feel it will take more than a year for life to return to normal. This is a significantly lower figure than that reported during the months of October – December 2021 (49%).
Overall, in the period April 2021 – March 2022, we found that 18% of people had a high GHQ-12 score, which could indicate a possible mental health problem. This is similar to the pre-pandemic figure published from the Health Survey Northern Ireland for 2019-20, which found that 19% of people in Northern Ireland had a high GHQ-12 score.
Six out of ten people (61%), interviewed in the period January - March 2022, said that they supported the easing of restrictions by the Northern Ireland Executive. This was significantly higher than in the previous quarter (October – December 2021), when half of people (50%) did so.
Overall, 10% of people aged 16 years and over interviewed in the period January – March 2022 said that they had experienced symptoms of Long COVID.
Almost three-quarters of people (73%) who reported symptoms of Long COVID said that it had negatively affected their general wellbeing. Some 56% said that it had negatively affected their ability to exercise and 48% reported that Long COVID had negatively affected their work.

Each chart in the report is also supported by an excel spreadsheet which provides confidence intervals for each estimate. Additional tables for all variables asked from April 2021 have been also been published in this release, where validated data is of a sufficient quality to release. A visual representation of these findings can also be found on the NISRA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Opinion Survey webpage.