Scientists in eight countries have just three weeks to survey 1000 people about their mental wellbeing during COVID-19.

Candidates will be asked about their mental wellbeing as well as their trust in government messaging, news reporting and social media.

Public health expert Professor Philip Schluter is leading the New Zealand team and told RNZ's Morning Report they want to look at the long-term psychological impacts of disasters and major events.

Philip says they hope to repeat the surveys in 12 months to track how people go and how they differ across cultures and countries' responses to the virus.

A big component of the study is to measure where and how people get their information about the virus from.

He says the New Zealand team have already finished their survey and found Kiwis have high trust in health authorities

"That's probably a reflection of the response that we had which was quite coordinated."

However, he says most interviews were done before the border violations became apparent so our data could have a halo effect.

"That's going to be really interesting to see going forward."

Philip is also the academic lead on the wellbeing project set up in response to the Christchurch earthquakes and says he had a special interest in seeing how Cantabrians responded to the virus.

"I want to look at Christchurch versus the rest of the country data to see how we're doing."

RNZ.