COVID19 & Lockdown: a Longitudinal Survey. – COCONEL

Analyses of the health crises which have occurred in recent decades showed that they were also social, economic and political crises which were notably fed by uncertainties about actual severity of the risk, health consequences to be feared, duration of the crisis, or reactions of the population. Public reactions are indeed a major unknown component in crisis management, as such management generally relies on measures requiring active support from the population. Public support also becomes crucial when the crisis extends over time, especially if coercive measures have been implemented.
In the current French context of confinement since March 17 due to the COVID-19 global health crisis, we aim to analyze the reactions of the French population to coercive governmental decisions, especially as regards living conditions and health, daily activities including information research, risk perceptions, knowledge and beliefs relating to the disease, opinions and attitudes towards epidemic, heath crisis management and the actors involved. Issues relating to social differentiation and temporal dynamics will be explored in-depth (as public reactions are expected to evolve due to both the epidemic and political measures).
Our project provides for a continuous, flexible and reactive tool. Since it is currently impossible to collect face-to-face data or even telephone data (telephone survey platforms are closed due to COVID-19), an online data collection is favored. Using a “rolling poll” technique will then allow a virtually continuous data collection (4 waves of 500 surveyed people each week). For each survey wave, the planned questionnaire (about 20-30 minutes to be filled out) will include a core questionnaire part to allow longitudinal monitoring of knowledge, beliefs and attitudes. Once the actual conditions of confinement being specified, health states of confined individuals (including stress and anxiety) will be assessed as well as their reactions to containment. In addition to the core questionnaire, a variable part (modified according to the waves) aims to account for the evolution of the health situation and the emergence of new issues. In all, our approach therefore aims at “sticking to” the COVID19 crisis as closely as possible by means of a tight supervision by a multidisciplinary Scientific Steering Committee (involving sociology, social psychology, economics, medicine and public health) whose role is first to adapt the questionnaire depending on the evolution of French epidemic situation and major issues.
Our project combines both scientific and operational objectives. In the short term, we aim to provide the authorities with a decision-making tool enabling them to monitor real time reactions and to anticipate, at least in part, reactions to a possible “second wave” of the COVID19 epidemic. In addition, feedback on this tool will be provided in the perspective of preparing public responses to future similar health crises. On a scientific ground, better knowledge and understanding of individual reactions to coercive measures is also a major scientific challenge for the researchers involved in this project, notably in view of the social heterogeneity of these reactions and their evolution over time. The collected data could also be used as a main input for implementation of epidemiological models attempting to predict the spread of the epidemic over time and space.