The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly shifted how social science data is and can be collected and has raised serious questions around participation, ethics and safeguarding in social science research. The Global Health Social Science Knowledge Hub have begun to collate a list of resources to address these challenges, Resource List: Social Science Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic. You are also invited to add your resources and discuss issues around research during COVID-19 in the Global Health Social Science forum.
The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) have encountered the COVID-19 crisis on several levels, including familial, civic, scholarly, and global. With support from a consortium of partner institutions, the SSRC has developed a series of initiatives devoted to understanding the pandemic’s immediate impact, as well as its lasting consequences:
- Agenda-setting working groups on “social distancing,” remote research methods and ethics, disaster studies, and racial inequality, among others
- Covid-19 essay forum
Includes reflections on democracy and pandemics, “slow disaster,” field research in insecure times and places, social science modeling, gun culture, and racial inequality, forthcoming from Scott Knowles, Julia Lynch, Admire Mare, Kim Fortun, Jonathan Metzl, Jamila Michener, and others
- A partnership on a Global Registry for Covid-19 Public Health and Social Science Research with CONVERGE, the National Science Foundation–funded initiative at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder
- #coronavirussyllabus
A crowdsourced list of resources on public health, disease outbreaks, pandemics, and other social shocks that helps to orient the Covid-19 crisis and sheds light on its multifaceted implications and effects as conveyed in scholarship, media, and the arts -
John Hopkins University - KAP COVID-19: Exploring knowledge, attitude and practices for COVID-19 prevention
With the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world have been gaining new knowledge, developing attitudes about the disease and adopting new prevention practices. In July 2020, people in 67 countries were surveyed to describe these changes around the globe.
Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) Action Plan Guidance COVID-19 Preparedness and Response
This tool is designed to support risk communication, community engagement staff and responders working with national health authorities, to develop, implement and monitor an effective action plan for communicating effectively with the public, engaging with communities, local partners and other stakeholders to help prepare and protect the public’s health during early response to COVID-19.
Social Science, Risk Communication and Community Engagement
Overview of WHO Social Science research. Selected publications are featured below:
- In 2016, WHO's Health Emergency Programme joined hands with the Welcome Trust to identify how best to integrate social science into health emergency response. The Internal Consultation brought together 72 experts and partners from more than 40 agencies to identify a mechanism to integrate social sciences in operations.
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Social Science in Humanitarian Action
Social Dimensions of the novel Coronavirus (nCoV) Outbreak and Response: Meeting Report
Report of Roundtable at the Wellcome Trust, London, 3rd February 2020. The roundtable objectives included the discussion of appropriate social science and humanities inputs that can improve understanding of the outbreak in global terms.
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GloPID-R/UKCDR - COVID-19 Research Project Tracker
Live database of funded research projects, clinical trials and funding calls across the world, mapped against the COVID-19 research priorities identified in the WHO Coordinated Global Research Roadmap: 2019 Novel Coronavirus.