Pfleger, A., Jensen, E. A., Lorenz, L., Jensen, A. M., Wagoner, B., Watzlawik, M. & Herbig, L. (2022). Life Trajectories Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Repeated Measures Diary Survey Dataset From 2020-2021. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.817648
Many psychological, sociological and communication challenges have emerged or become attenuated during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand these challenges, we need to gain an in-depth understanding of the role and perspective of individuals as they coped with this long-running global crisis. For example, while the macro-level life-and-death consequences of (non-)compliance with mitigation measures aimed at reducing the spread of the virus have already been shown in the medical literature, accurately accounting for the temporal unfolding of within-individual psycho-social and information-seeking factors. Taking multiple snapshots of these multidimensional factors in a wider time window may contribute to better explanations of such behavior, yet requires specialized research methods.
Goisis and Moroni (2021) have provided their individual psychoanalytic accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic via personal diaries, and Munyikwa (2020) similarly documented their own personal pandemic experiences as an anthropologist. Taking a more outward perspective, Ibrahim et al. (2021) examined the feasibility of evaluating the psychosocial effects of virtually guided exercise on elderly citizens through a repeated measures study during the first COVID-19 wave.
To our knowledge, however, there are no datasets nor other literature yet published that incorporate comprehensive methods investigating the social dimensions of, and public attitudes related to, the pandemic over an extended period. To foster evidence-based responses to the challenges posed by this public health crisis (e.g., see Jensen and Gerber, 2020), we designed a diary survey for linked sequential measurements sufficiently frequent to allow understanding in granular detail the pandemic-related perspectives and experiences of individual members of the public in Germany.
