SHARE's contribution to research about the social, health and economic impact of COVID-19

SHARE resumes Wave 8 fieldwork via telephone interviews including a special SHARE Corona questionnaire

The data collection will start at the end of May/beginning of June in a sub-sample of all SHARE panel respondents in 27 European countries and Israel.

The questionnaire contains questions relevant for various research areas:

• Infection and Health questions such as: Have you been tested? Did you or relatives or friends and colleagues have COVID-19 or similar symptoms?
• Mental health questions such as: Have you been sad or depressed? Do you feel lonely?
• Economic questions such as: Have you been affected by short-time work? What was your loss of income? Has this loss been offset by government transfers?
• Social Network questions such as: Who were you in contact with? Who helped you? Did you help someone?
• Healthcare questions: Did you get access to a doctor in acceptable time? Did you have to postpone an earlier planned operation? Have you been treated satisfactorily in the hospital?

You can find the Corona questionnaire online (version as of June 02, 2020).

The data collected with this questionnaire will allow examining in depth how the risk group of the older individuals is coping with the health-related and socioeconomic impact of COVID-19. The great advantage of these data will be the possibility to measure and interpret differences in a cross-country and a longitudinal dimension. SHARE’s embeddedness in a worldwide network of harmonized ageing surveys, permits European and even worldwide comparisons of how well the healthcare and social systems have responded to the pandemic and which lessons should be drawn for the future. Moreover, the use of data from previous waves allows comparing this crisis’ socioeconomic impact with previous hardships, for example the economic crisis in 2008.
Hence, the new SHARE Corona data will enable researchers and policy makers to learn from the crisis management in other countries, linking these new data with what we already know about the life histories of our respondents and thus shed light on whether the already vulnerable have been particularly hit by the crisis, be it health-wise or economically.

Please find more information about the Corona questionnaire here.