COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a very disruptive time, with wide-ranging repercussions across the world. In 2020-21, we asked you and participants in four other studies (born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000-02) to take part in three online surveys so that we could find out more about the impact of COVID-19 on your lives, health, work, relationships and social life. Around 30,000 people across the five studies took part in at least one of them.

Researchers are using the data from the COVID-19 Survey for hundreds of research projects, looking into the impact of the pandemic on mental health, employment and finances, family responsibilities and access to healthcare.

Research based on the COVID-19 Survey has found that:

• The number of hours worked in Britain decreased by around 40% in lockdown, with mothers most likely to sacrifice work for home schooling and developmental play.
• Young women were the most likely to have experienced high levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness in lockdown, compared to older adults.
• Nearly 30% of people reported being financially worse off since the start of the pandemic.
• People who had higher pre-pandemic levels of depression or anxiety were more severely affected by disruption to jobs and healthcare during the pandemic.
• Older generations – aged 74, 62, and 50 – had the highest levels of trust in government compared to younger generations.