The COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study: Understanding the Longitudinal Psychosocial Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK; a Methodological Overview Paper

Abstract

The COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study was designed and implemented as a rapid survey of the psychosocial impacts of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), known as COVID-19 in residents across the United Kingdom. This study utilised a longitudinal design to collect online survey based data. The aim of this paper was to describe (1) the rationale behind the study and the corresponding selection of constructs to be assessed; (2) the study design and methodology; (3) the resultant sociodemographic characteristics of the full sample; (4) how the baseline survey data compares to the UK adult population (using data from the Census) on a variety of sociodemographic variables; (5) the ongoing efforts for weekly and monthly longitudinal assessments of the baseline cohort; and (6) outline future research directions. We believe the study is in a unique position to make a significant contribution to the growing body of literature to help understand the psychological impact of this pandemic and inform future clinical and research directions that the UK will implement in response to COVID-19.

Media consumption and mental health during COVID-19 lockdown: a UK cross-sectional study across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

“…The study conducted was based on cross-sectional data. The baseline data presented here is taken from the COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study (Armour et al 2020) a longitudinal, online survey of the general adult (18+) population of the UK. The study was designed to assess and monitor the psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK residents.…”

“…The survey was administered as a rapid data collection exercise at the start of the UK's first COVID-19 lockdown, and it was administered both via a participant data collection panel (PROLIFIC) and via social media channels. After finalising data collection, the PI of the project compared the collected data to the UK census and reported that males were underrepresented compared to males in the UK population (Armour et al 2020). The resultant over-representation of females in the sample may have influenced the results as research has previously suggested that females have a higher morbidity rate than males regarding anxiety and depression (Matud 2017;Vlassoff 2007).…”

“…The resultant over-representation of females in the sample may have influenced the results as research has previously suggested that females have a higher morbidity rate than males regarding anxiety and depression (Matud 2017;Vlassoff 2007). Armour et al (2020) further reported that employed individuals and students were oversampled; this is likely reflective of the nature of recruitment and data collection being entirely online; thus, those without access to devices and internet are unlikely to be represented in the data. Concerning ethnicity, these comparisons revealed that this was the variable which most closely represented the ethnic profiles across the UK nations (For a detailed discussion on data representativeness see Armour et al 2020).…”

Psychological, social, and situational factors associated with COVID‐19 vaccination intentions: A study of UK key workers and non‐key workers

“…Particular groups such as males, older adults (65+), and lower levels of education were underrepresented. A detailed description of the sample characteristics and their comparison to UK-wide demographic can be found elsewhere (Armour et al, 2021). It is also important to acknowledge that the definition of key worker used in this study, although in line with the Government-defined categories, is broad.…”

Longitudinal analysis of the UK COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study: Trajectories of anxiety, depression and COVID-19-related stress symptomology

“…COVID-19 is a pandemic characterised by the need for change in the most fundamental aspects of human society, our interpersonal behaviors and social connections. Consequently, it is predicted to have major implications for mental health, and early evidence suggests some groups of people will be impacted disproportionately ( Armour et al., 2020 ; Fancourt et al., 2020 ; Kirby, 2020 ; O'Connor et al., 2020 ).…”