Perceived risk crowds out trust? Trust and public compliance with coronavirus restrictions over the course of the pandemic

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesize that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany, and the United Kingdom

Dementia, home care and institutionalisation from hospitals in older people

This study examines the relationship between dementia and institutionalisation directly after hospital discharges in older people and explores potential mediators of the association. Our analyses are based on linked Scottish administrative health and social care data, including 79,983 hospital stays for 43,753 patients aged 65 or over. Our results show that dementia patients are more likely to be discharged to care institutions compared with non-dementia patients (odds ratio=17). Further analyses reveal that this can be partially explained by the fact that dementia patients are more likely to have injury-related admissions and long hospital stays. This indirect effect accounts for around 6\% of the total effect. We also investigate the effect of receiving home care, finding no evidence that it influences the likelihood of institutionalisation from hospitals in older people

Issues with the Measurement of Informal Care in Social Surveys: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Informal care plays a significant role in the care system for older people in the United Kingdom, and this is projected to increase considerably in the next three decades as the population ages. Understanding these trends requires a good quality measurement of informal care. In this study, we compare care givers’ responses to different informal care questions from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to investigate the influence of question design on the self-reporting of informal care. We also analyse spousal care dyads in order to model discrepancies in the reporting of care provision between spouses to provide an insight into the reliability of informal care measurements. We find that the most common measures used are likely to be under-estimating both the scale and scope of informal care, and we recommend careful consideration of the content of informal care survey questions in order to operationalise the measures of informal care activities

Teacher Workforce Survey in Scotland (2017): Final Report

The Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling designed an online survey of teacher workforce, to obtain a current picture of teachers’ professional working across Scotland. This research project was funded by the NASUWT. We were interested in teachers’ working patterns, workload, morale and their views on continuing professional development (CPD). We also investigated how teachers were experiencing changes to Scotland’s educational policy landscape from 2010 to date, and the impacts that these changes had on their professional lives. We aimed to understand the variation in teachers’ views and experiences across different characteristic groups, among teachers from different school phases, and with varying levels of experience and seniority. The main stage of the data collection was carried out from April to June 2017. A second stage was conducted in August and September 2017. In total, nearly 1,400 teachers from across Scotland responded to the survey. Teachers’ responses have highlighted a number of important issues. This report will present the key findings from the survey data. The report begins with an outline of the survey methodology, including details of sampling methods and design of the survey questionnaire. It highlights some difficulties that we encountered while conducting the survey. In this section, we also provide some summary statistics of survey respondents. Sections 3 to 7 report on findings relating to working pattern and workload, CPD, teachers’ morale, working environment and teachers’ experiences of recent policy changes. We have made comparisons across some characteristics, such as gender, age, disability and school level, serving as examples. Finally, Section 8 provides a brief summary of the key findings and concludes the report

Psychological consequences of long COVID: comparing trajectories of depressive and anxiety symptoms before and after contracting SARS-CoV-2 between matched long- and short-COVID groups

BACKGROUND: There is a growing global awareness of the psychological consequences of long COVID, supported by emerging empirical evidence. However, the emergence and long-term trajectories of psychological symptoms following the infection are still unclear. AIMS: To examine when psychological symptoms first emerge following infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the long-term trajectories of psychological symptoms comparing long- and short-COVID groups. METHOD: We analysed longitudinal data from the UCL COVID-19 Social Study (March 2020 to November 2021). We included data from adults living in England who reported contracting SARS-CoV-2 by November 2021 (n = 3115). Of these, 15.9% reported having had long COVID (n = 495). They were matched to participants who had short COVID using propensity score matching on a variety of demographic, socioeconomic and health covariates (n = 962 individuals with 13 325 observations) and data were further analysed using growth curve modelling. RESULTS: Depressive and anxiety symptoms increased immediately following the onset of infection in both long- and short-COVID groups. But the long-COVID group had substantially greater initial increases in depressive symptoms and heightened levels over 22 months follow-up. Initial increases in anxiety were not significantly different between groups, but only the short-COVID group experienced an improvement in anxiety over follow-up, leading to widening differences between groups. CONCLUSIONS: The findings support work on the psychobiological pathways involved in the development of psychological symptoms relating to long COVID. The results highlight the need for monitoring of mental health and provision of adequate support to be interwoven with diagnosis and treatment of the physical consequences of long COVID

Depressive and anxiety symptoms in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic in England: A panel data analysis over 2 years

BACKGROUND: There has been much research into the mental health impact of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and how it is related to time-invariant individual characteristics. However, there is still a lack of research showing long-term trajectories of mental health across different stages of the pandemic. And little is known regarding the longitudinal association of time-varying factors with mental health outcomes. This study aimed to provide a longitudinal profile of how mental health in adults changed across different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and to examine their longitudinal associations with time-varying contextual (e.g., COVID-19 policy response and pandemic intensity) and individual level factors. METHODS AND FINDINGS: This study used data from a large panel study of over 57,000 adults living in England, who were followed up regularly for 2 years between March 2020 and April 2022. Mental health outcomes were depressive and anxiety symptoms. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and anxiety symptoms by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder assessment (GAD-7). Entropy balancing weights were applied to restore sample representativeness. After weighting, approximately 50% of participants were female, 14% from ethnic minority backgrounds, with a mean age of 48 years. Descriptive analyses showed that mental health changes were largely in line with changes in COVID-19 policy response and pandemic intensity. Further, data were analysed using fixed-effects (FE) models, which controlled for all time-invariant confounders (observed or not). FE models were fitted separately across 3 stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the first national lockdown (21/03/2020-23/08/2020), second and third national lockdowns (21/09/2020-11/04/2021), and "freedom" period (12/04/2021-14/11/2021). We found that more stringent policy response (measured by stringency index) was associated with increased depressive symptoms, in particular, during lockdown periods (β = 0.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.18 to 0.28], p < 0.001; β = 0.30, 95% CI = [0.21 to 0.39], p < 0.001; β = 0.04, 95% CI = [-0.03 to 0.12], p = 0.262). Higher COVID-19 deaths were also associated with increased depressive symptoms, but this association weakened over time (β = 0.29, 95% CI = [0.25 to 0.32], p < 0.001; β = 0.09, 95% CI = [0.05 to 0.13], p < 0.001; β = -0.06, 95% CI = [-0.30 to 0.19], p = 0.655). Similar results were also found for anxiety symptoms, for example, stringency index (β = 0.17, 95% CI = [0.12 to 0.21], p < 0.001; β = 0.13, 95% CI = [0.06 to 0.21], p = 0.001; β = 0.10, 95% CI = [0.03 to 0.17], p = 0.005), COVID-19 deaths (β = 0.07, 95% CI = [0.04 to 0.10], p < 0.001; β = 0.04, 95% CI = [0.00 to 0.07], p = 0.03; β = 0.16, 95% CI = [-0.08 to 0.39], p = 0.192). Finally, there was also evidence for the longitudinal association of mental health with individual level factors, including confidence in government/healthcare/essentials, COVID-19 knowledge, COVID-19 stress, COVID-19 infection, and social support. However, it is worth noting that the magnitudes of these longitudinal associations were generally small. The main limitation of the study was its non-probability sample design. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provided empirical evidence on how changes in contextual and individual level factors were related to changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms. While some factors (e.g., confidence in healthcare, social support) clearly acted as consistent predictors of depressive and/or anxiety symptoms, other factors (e.g., stringency index, COVID-19 knowledge) were dependent on the specific situations occurring within society. This could provide important implications for policy making and for a better understanding of mental health of the general public during a national or global health crisis

Comparisons of home-based arts engagement across three national lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in England

Between March 2020 and March 2021, the United Kingdom (UK) experienced three lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the evident association between arts engagement and wellbeing, this study was designed to compare the predictors and patterns of home-based arts engagement during these lockdowns. Data analysed in this study were from the UK COVID-19 Social Study run by University College London. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify predictors of arts engagement and compare (i) respondents’ engagement levels during the first lockdown in April/May 2020 and their levels in pre-pandemic times (N = 23,086), (ii) their engagement levels during the second lockdown in November/December 2020 with their levels during the first lockdown (N = 11,481), and (iii) their engagement levels during the third lockdown in January/February 2021 with their levels during the first lockdown (N = 13,270). During first lockdown, 1 in 4 increased their arts engagement and 1 in 6 decreased it. Of those who increased, 2 in 5 maintained or further increased their engagement in subsequent lockdowns, but just 7% of those who had decreased their engagement increased it. Younger adults (aged 18–29) showed initial increases in first lockdown, whilst people who were not employed and those with a physical health condition showed decreases and people with a mental health condition showed changes during the first lockdown (both increases and decreases). Females and people with higher education showed continuous changes across the three lockdowns, with women being more likely to increase their engagement and those with higher education being less likely to decrease. People of ethnic minorities and those with higher income declined their engagement in the third lockdown. This study provides insight into levels of arts engagement across the three national lockdowns in the UK and suggests that the pandemic may have affected long-term cultural behaviours for some groups

Mental health and wellbeing among people with informal caring responsibilities across different time points during the COVID-19 pandemic: a population-based propensity score matching analysis

AIMS: Due to a prolonged period of national and regional lockdown measures during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there has been an increase reliance on informal care for informal carers. In light of this, the current study compared the experiences of carers and non-carers on various mental health and wellbeing measures across six key time points during the pandemic. METHODS: Data analysed were from the University College London (UCL) COVID -19 Social Study. Our study focused on six time points in England: (1) the first national lockdown (March-April 2020); (2) the beginning of first lockdown rules easing (May 2020); (3) the second national lockdown (November 2020); (4) the third national lockdown (January 2021); (5) the easing of the third lockdown (March 2021); and (6) the end of restrictions (July-August 2021). We considered five mental health and wellbeing measures: depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, loneliness, life satisfaction, and sense of being worthwhile. Propensity score matching was applied for the analyses. RESULTS: We found that informal carers experienced higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms than non-carers across much of the pandemic. During the first national lockdown, carers also experienced a higher sense of life being worthwhile. No association was found between informal caring responsibilities and levels of loneliness and life satisfaction. CONCLUSION: Given that carers are an essential national healthcare support, especially during a pandemic, it is crucial to integrate carers' needs into healthcare planning and delivery. These results highlight that there is a pressing need to provide adequate and targeted mental health support for carers during and following this pandemic

Longitudinal Associations Between Arts Engagement and Flourishing in Young Adults: A Fixed Effects Analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

There is growing evidence on the impact of arts engagement on flourishing. However, social gradients in arts engagement and flourishing may have led to an overestimation of this impact, and there is a lack of longitudinal research in young people. We aimed to test the longitudinal associations between arts engagement and flourishing in emerging adults, accounting for observed and unobserved individual characteristics. We included 3,333 participants aged 18–28 from the Transition into Adulthood Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We measured flourishing across emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing, and frequency of engagement in artistic, musical, or theatrical organized activities, biennially 2005–2019. We analyzed data using fixed effects regression and Arellano-Bond methods to control for bidirectional relationships. Increases in arts engagement were associated with increases in flourishing, before and after adjusting for time-varying confounders. This relationship was driven by enhanced psychological and social wellbeing. After controlling for bidirectionality, increases in arts engagement predicted subsequent improvements in flourishing and social wellbeing. In sensitivity analyses, residential area was a moderator; arts engagement was only associated with increased flourishing in metropolitan (and not non-metropolitan) areas. Increases in arts engagement are associated with enhanced flourishing within individuals, and these associations hold across many subgroups of the population. Those in non-metropolitan areas may have fewer opportunities for arts engagement. Future work must consider how funding can be distributed to ensure that the arts are accessible across communities and geographical areas, providing all young people with opportunities to experience their potential benefits