Coronavirus (COVID-19) - impact on wellbeing: survey summary

This summary contains key findings from wave two of a telephone survey we commissioned to better understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people in Scotland including on work and finances, neighbourhood support, personal wellbeing, and behaviour changes.

This document is part of a collection


Background and research questions

COVID-19 causes harm to people's health, to our society and to our economy.[1] This report adds to the existing evidence and highlights some of the effects of the pandemic on our society, and the differences for different sub-groups and geographical areas. 

Throughout the pandemic the Scottish Government has collected information about how ways of life and attitudes are changing in Scotland.[2,3] During the first 'lockdown', in April-May 2020, the Scottish Government commissioned a telephone survey with 1,000 people that asked about experiences of anxiety and worry, financial hardship, and help and support within communities. This showed that that some groups were experiencing higher levels of hardship and instability as a result of the pandemic than others.[4]

We repeated this survey in December 2020, to look at what has changed, and who is being most affected. 

The aims of this research were to:

  • inform our understanding of the short, medium and longer-term impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing, for different groups and in different geographical areas;
  • identify if, and how, the impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing change during autumn and winter

More information about the methods, and respondent sample sizes can be found in Annex A.

Contact

Email: covid-19.behaviours@gov.scot

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