Research During COVID-19: Emerging Approaches and Exemplars

Here we (still) are!

In the early stages of the COVID-19 Methodspace offered resources for researchers, student or experienced, as well as for faculty members thrust into remote teaching. Now enough time has passed that we are seeing published articles that either discuss research that was conducted during the pandemic, or explain the methods used. Alas, we still need to learn about approaches for carrying out research in uncertain times and with restrictions about access to settings and participants.

Check out these new articles for a variety of examples, and see this post for a collection of articles about mixed methods research.

Methods to Use When Doing Research During COVID

Crivello, G., & Favara, M. (2021). COVID-19 and the ‘ethics of disruption’: Current dilemmas facing longitudinal research in low- and middle-income countries. Methodological Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799121994223

In this piece, we draw on recent experiences from the Young Lives study to discuss some of the ethical and practical challenges facing longitudinal cohort studies in low- and middle-income countries in the time of coronavirus. We argue that COVID-19 has instigated an ‘ethics of disruption’ for social researchers across the world, and for longitudinal cohort studies like Young Lives, this requires navigating three core considerations: first, managing research relationships and reciprocity within an observational study design; second, maintaining methodological continuity and consistency across time; and third, balancing an immediate short-term response to COVID-19 against the long-term perspective. We refer to the study’s plan to implement a new COVID-19 phone survey to illustrate how the team are navigating this altered ethical terrain.

Marzi, S. (2021). Participatory video from a distance: co-producing knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic using smartphones. Qualitative Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211038171

Abstract. In this paper, I outline an innovative remote participatory video (PV) methodology that makes use of participants’ smartphones. It was developed as an alternative to co-production research and can be employed when face-to-face contact is impossible or undesirable. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face research interactions have been disrupted or become impossible. Yet it is vital to reach those who are most affected by emergencies and to include their voices. The research reported here was a collaboration between women in Medellín, Colombia, and a team of filmmakers and researchers. We developed an innovative remote PV methodology using participants’ smartphones, researching how women from poorer neighbourhoods were affected by the pandemic in their everyday lives. Here, I reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the remote PV methodology, arguing that it offers new avenues for participants to take control of the filming and editing process, and builds technical skills and capacities that have value beyond the timeframe of the project. I conclude that the remote PV method has great potential as a stand-alone method, moving the landscape of co-production research away from a requirement for geographical co-presence and potentially shifting power and ownership towards local co-researchers and participants.

Richardson, J., Godfrey, B., & Walklate, S. (2021). Rapid, remote and responsive research during COVID-19. Methodological Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991211008581

Abstract. In March 2020, the UK Research and Innovation announced an emergency call for research to inform policy and practice responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This call implicitly and explicitly required researchers to work rapidly, remotely and responsively. In this article, we briefly review how rapid response methods developed in health research can be used in other social science fields. After outlining the literature in this area, we use the early stages of our applied research into criminal justice responses to domestic abuse during COVID-19 as a case study to illustrate some of the practical challenges we faced in responding to this rapid funding call. We review our use of and experience with remote research methods and describe how we used and adapted these methods in our research, from data gathering through to transcription and analysis. We reflect on our experiences to date of what it means to be responsive in fast-changing research situations. Finally, we make some practical recommendations for conducting applied research in a ‘nimble’ way to meet the demands of working rapidly, remotely, responsively and, most importantly, responsibly.

Examples of Research During or About COVID-19

Special Issue of Qualitative Inquiry: Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking
during COVID-19

Volume 27 Issue 7, September 2021
Guest Editors: Annette Markham, Anne Harris, and Mary Elizabeth Luka
Find the Table of Contents here, and links to articles here.

Abstract. How does this pandemic moment help us to think about the relationships between self and other, or between humans and the planet? How are people making sense of COVID-19 in their everyday lives, both as a local and intimate occurrence with microscopic properties, and a planetary-scale event with potentially massive outcomes?

This special issue conveys a broad array of responses to these questions. While it began as a call for expressions of interest for a special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, it grew into a large-scale, still-ongoing experiment involving more than 150 people from 26 countries. The original goal was to use autoethnographic methods to consider how these relationships are characterized, understood, and being enacted in this pandemic, by paying attention to dynamics of scale—such as the microscopic-as-the-whole, or the whole as a way to make sense of the granular. Researchers with varying degrees of experience with qualitative methods and/or autoethnography started working with the research questions we had posed in our call, some independently, some in collaboration. They all engaged at some level with each other through both an email list and a Facebook group. As part of the Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking during times of COVID-19 project (hereafter Massive/Micro), many completed 3 weeks of responding to daily prompts, sent out to them as a “21 days of autoethnography” experiment.1

This special issue therefore offers two things to the reader: first, each essay presents the granular or microscopic practices of everyday life and inquiry and connects it with the massive scales and macroscopic aspects of this moment in time. These pieces can be read as the results of a collaborative experiment whereby many people across lifespans, time zones, cultural backgrounds, geopolitics, and experiences came together to tackle these questions even as they were experiencing challenging and traumatic times.

Douglas, K. M. (2021). COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 270–275. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220982068

Abstract. Conspiracy theories started to appear on social media immediately after the first news about COVID-19. Is the virus a hoax? Is it a bioweapon designed in a Chinese laboratory? These conspiracy theories typically have an intergroup flavour, blaming one group for having some involvement in either manufacturing the virus or controlling public opinion about it. In this article, I will discuss why people are attracted to conspiracy theories in general, and why conspiracy theories seem to have flourished during the pandemic. I will discuss what the consequences of these conspiracy theories are for individuals, groups, and societies. I will then discuss some potential strategies for addressing the negative consequences of conspiracy theories. Finally, I will consider some open questions for research regarding COVID-19 conspiracy theories, in particular focusing on the potential impact of these conspiracy theories for group processes and intergroup relations.

Müller-Mahn, D., & Kioko, E. (2021). Rethinking African Futures after COVID-19. Africa Spectrum, 56(2), 216–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/00020397211003591

Abstract. This article focuses on the impact of COVID-19 in Africa, describes its effects for ongoing research, and asks how it may impact African studies. In Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the pandemic is changing the way people think about the future. The crisis gives rise to a feeling of uncertainty, while casting doubt on future orientations based on forecasts and planning. This scepticism does not concern the African continent alone, but it is here that the call to open a fresh perspective on the future is expressed most emphatically. COVID-19 reinvigorates the question of how African futures are imagined and shaped in relation to the world at large. Against this backdrop, this article suggests three areas where future-oriented African studies should be revised in response to the current crisis – namely, how to incorporate uncertainty, how to decolonise understandings of African futures, and how to translate these considerations into research practice.

Robinson, L., Schulz, J., Wiborg, Ø. N., & Johnston, E. (2021). The COVID Connection: Pandemic Anxiety, COVID-19 Comprehension, and Digital Confidence. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642211003155

This article presents logistic models examining how pandemic anxiety and COVID-19 comprehension vary with digital confidence among adults in the United States during the first wave of the pandemic. As we demonstrate statistically with a nationally representative data set, the digitally confident have lower probability of experiencing physical manifestations of pandemic anxiety and higher probability of adequately comprehending critical information on COVID-19. The effects of digital confidence on both pandemic anxiety and COVID-19 comprehension persist, even after a broad range of potentially confounding factors are taken into account, including sociodemographic factors such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, metropolitan status, and partner status. They also remain discernable after the introduction of general anxiety, as well as income and education. These results offer evidence that the digitally disadvantaged experience greater vulnerability to the secondary effects of the pandemic in the form of increased somatized stress and decreased COVID-19 comprehension. Going forward, future research and policy must make an effort to address digital confidence and digital inequality writ large as crucial factors mediating individuals’ responses to the pandemic and future crises.