A qualitative analysis of comments received from the general public in response to gazetted amendments to the Disaster Management Act Regulations: Alert Level 3 (Gazette 43521 of 12 July 2020)

Abstract

The HSRC was requested to receive, on behalf of government, email responses from the general public to the gazetted amendments to the Disaster Management Act Regulations: Alert level 3 (Gazette 43521 of 12 July 2020) during Coronavirus COVID-19 as announced by the President on Sunday, 12 July 2020. The dedicated email address received 636 emails by the 24th of July 2020. Two further emails were received subsequent to the analysis of the comments, which were not considered in this report. The emails received are not representative of the general population, and are qualitative in nature and were voluntarily sent mostly by individuals as opposed to organisations and groups. The HSRC team developed a framework for capturing individual emails. These were sorted by sector and collated into themes. Each email was captured in the framework spreadsheet and then analysed. Qualitative analyses were undertaken to identify themes and sentiments emerging from the data. Summaries were written for every 100 comments. These summaries were collated into a single document.