How Did People Cope During the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Structural Topic Modelling Analysis of Free-Text Data From 11,000 United Kingdom Adults
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial impacts on lives across the globe. Job losses have been widespread, and individuals have experienced significant restrictions on their usual activities, including extended isolation from family and friends. While studies suggest population mental health worsened from before the pandemic, not all individuals appear to have experienced poorer mental health. This raises the question of how people managed to cope during the pandemic.
Methods
To understand the coping strategies individuals employed during the COVID-19 pandemic, we used structural topic modelling, a text mining technique, to extract themes from free-text data on coping from over 11,000 UK adults, collected between 14 October and 26 November 2020.
Results
We identified 16 topics. The most discussed coping strategy was ‘thinking positively’ and involved themes of gratefulness and positivity. Other strategies included engaging in activities and hobbies (such as doing DIY, exercising, walking and spending time in nature), keeping routines, and focusing on one day at a time. Some participants reported more avoidant coping strategies, such as drinking alcohol and binge eating. Coping strategies varied by respondent characteristics including age, personality traits and sociodemographic characteristics and some coping strategies, such as engaging in creative activities, were associated with more positive lockdown experiences.
Conclusion
A variety of coping strategies were employed by individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The coping strategy an individual adopted was related to their overall lockdown experiences. This may be useful for helping individuals prepare for future lockdowns or other events resulting in self-isolation.
Article activity feed
-
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.13.21262002: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We included participant’s gender, ethnicity (white, non-white), age (smooth splines, degrees of freedom 4), education level (degree or above, A-Level or equivalent, GCSE or below), living arrangement (alone; alone, without child; alone, with child), psychiatric diagnosis (any, none), long-term physical health conditions (0, 1, 2+), self-isolation status (yes, no), and Big-5 personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), each collected at first data collection. Neuroticismsuggested: (Sullivan Lab Evidence Project, RRID:SCR_000753)R…
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.13.21262002: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We included participant’s gender, ethnicity (white, non-white), age (smooth splines, degrees of freedom 4), education level (degree or above, A-Level or equivalent, GCSE or below), living arrangement (alone; alone, without child; alone, with child), psychiatric diagnosis (any, none), long-term physical health conditions (0, 1, 2+), self-isolation status (yes, no), and Big-5 personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism), each collected at first data collection. Neuroticismsuggested: (Sullivan Lab Evidence Project, RRID:SCR_000753)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Nevertheless, this study had several limitations. Not all of the topics identified a single theme consistently and associations with participant characteristics could be driven by idiosyncratic texts. Our sample, though heterogeneous, was not representative of the UK population. Respondents to the free-text question were also biased towards the better educated. This may have generated bias in the topic regression results. While it is plausible that participants discussed coping strategies that they deemed most important, participants may have employed multiple coping strategies and not written about them all. Further, across the long timespan of the pandemic, individuals may have adopted different strategies at different points. Responses may have been biased towards those salient at the time (e.g., those used recently). Moreover, individuals may not interpret or be aware of a behaviour as a coping strategy, though it has that effect – for instance, increasing consumption of alcohol or fatty or sugary foods. A final limitation was that, while we included a wide set of predictors in our models, many relevant factors were unobserved. Associations may be biased by unobserved confounding.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-