Impact of COVID 19 on Doctoral and Early Career Researchers

Abstract

SMaRteN, in partnership with Vitae, conducated research into the impact of COVID-19 on the working lives of doctoral researchers and research staff. SMaRteN www.smarten.org.uk The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Student Mental Health Research Network (SMaRteN) is working to support and encourage better research into student mental health. SMaRteN is based at Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences at King’s College London. Vitae is a non-profit programme supporting the professional and career development of researchers. www.vitae.ac.uk @vitae_news Covid-19 and the associated lock down has caused substantive disruption to the study and work of doctoral students and researchers in universities. The response to the pandemic has varied across universities and research funders. SMaRteN and Vitae aim to develop a national picture for how doctoral researchers and research staff have been affected by the pandemic. ​The survey includes questions relating to the impact of COVID-19 on research work, mental wellbeing, social connection. We further address the impact of COVID-19 on changes to employment outside of academia, living arrangements and caring arrangements and the consequent effect of these changes on research work. The survey considers the support provided by supervisors / line managers and by universities. Please note, Time 2 (follow up) data was collected, corresponding to this survey, in September / October 2020. This can be accessed via the link at the bottom of the page. Data available here as either an SPSS or Excel download:SPSS file contains labels Excel file contains labels and brief notes about coding Recoding data for CV19 impact - SPSS Syntax file describes steps taken to code data CV19_impact_on_researchers - word document, export from Qualtrics of the survey. Qualitative data - Benefits and Challenges of the lockdown. Respondents gave qualitative responses to a number of questions. We are slowly cleaning these up to get them fully anonymised. At the moment, we have only done this for the sample (approximately 1,000) of responses that have been analysed to look at the benefits and challenges of the lockdown. Please note, data has been removed from this data set to ensure participant anonymity. For further information, please contact Dr Nicola Byrom - nicola.byrom@kcl.ac.uk