Abstract
High levels of compliance with public health measures are critical to ensuring a successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, most data on compliance are self-reported. Tendency to overreport due to social desirability can yield biased estimates of compliance. We estimate rates of compliance with facemask mandates in Kenya, Nigeria, and Bangladesh using data from phone surveys conducted in March-April 2021. Data on compliance are collected from different survey modules: self-reported compliance (stated) and a list experiment (elicited). We find substantial gaps between stated and elicited rates of facemask wearing for different groups depending on specific country contexts and high levels of overreporting of facemask compliance in self-reported surveys. We observe differences in rates of self-reported facemask wearing among key groups but not using the elicited responses from the list experiment, which suggest that social desirability bias may vary by demographics. Data collected from self-reported surveys may not be reliable to monitor ongoing compliance with public health measures. Moreover, elicited compliance rates indicate levels of mask wearing are likely much lower than those estimated using self-reported data.