Psychology

The Understanding Society COVID-19 study is a regular survey on the experiences and reactions of the UK population to the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey is an integral part of Understanding Society and researchers can link data from the COVID-19 survey to answers respondents have given in previous and future waves of the annual Understanding Society survey.The survey is funded by the ESRC and the Health Foundation. This briefing covers the questions on parent and child relationships in Wave 2 of the survey. The questions cover parents relationships with children and whether they have become better or worse since the government's 'stay at home' policy; whether parents quarrel, talk with their ..

The Understanding Society COVID-19 study is a regular survey on the experience and reactions of the UK population to the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey is an integral part of Understanding Society and researchers can link the data from the COVID-19 survey to answers respondents have given in previous (and future) waves of the annual Understanding Society survey. The survey is funded by the ESRC and the Health Foundation.This briefing note covers five broad topics: the experience of COVID-19 symptoms, testing and hospitalisation, use of health services for long-term health conditions, mental health and loneliness, health behaviours, and the receipt and giving of care.

We document a decline in mental well-being after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. This decline is twice as large for women as for men. We seek to explain this gender gap by exploring gender differences in: family and caring responsibilities; financial and work situation; social engagement; health situation, and health behaviours, including exercise. Differences in family and caring responsibilities play some role, but the bulk of the gap is explained by social factors. Women reported more close friends before the pandemic than men, and increased loneliness after the pandemic's onset. Other factors are similarly distributed across genders and so play little role. Finally, we docu..

We use data from Wave 9 of UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and the April 2020 Wave of the UKHLS COVID-19 survey to compare measures of ex ante inequality of opportunity (IOp) in psychological distress, as measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), before (Wave 9) and at the initial peak (April 2020) of the pandemic. Based on a Caseness measure, the prevalence of psychological distress increases from 18.3% to 28.3% between Wave 9 and April 2020. Also, there is a systematic increase in total inequality in the Likert GHQ-12 score. However, measures of IOp have not increased. Specifically, the proportion of total inequality attributed to circumstances has declined, consistent wi..

ISER commissioned Kantar to conduct cognitive testing followed by a short qualitative discussion to support the development of the retirement planning module. The cognitive testing explored how participants understood and interpreted questions in the module to identify any barriers to responding and potential areas for improvement. The qualitative discussion captured broader views on and experiences of planning for retirement. The idealised version of retirement evoked ideas of personal and financial freedom, which did not align to participants' expectations of the own retirement.

We explore the cognitive process by which respondents decide whether or not to consent to having their survey data linked to administrative records. Using data from the Understanding Society household panel study we document the extent of inconsistencies in respondents’ consent decisions, between data domains and over time, and the impact of the mode of data collection on consent. To understand the reasons for inconsistencies and why the mode affects consent, we report on qualitative in-depth interviews that examine how respondents understand the consent request and which factors influence their decision.

This paper examines the effect of postpartum depression (PPD) on maternal employment in the UK and assesses the extent of the direct and indirect link between PPD and maternal employment up to eleven years after the birth of the child. The study tests a range of factors (marital status, physical longstanding health problems, mental health problems, children’s outcomes) as mediators in order to assess the indirect effect of PPD on maternal employment, utilising several waves of data from the Millennium Cohort Study. The findings are of significance to policy makers as they indicate that PPD has a direct effect on maternal employment 5 years after the birth of the child and an indirect effec..

This paper examines the role of postpartum depression (PPD) on the emotional and cognitive development of 11-year olds, a key stage of transition in child development before entering adolescence. The present study uses data from the MCS, a longitudinal cohort study with a large and representative sample of the UK population. The results show that PPD impacts on child emotional difficulties when these are reported by the mother or the teacher; child-reported measures of emotional problems do not show any correlation with PPD Cognitive ability tests show no association between PPD and children’s cognitive performance at age 11. The results of the paper have enhanced our insight regarding a s..