University experts want to know how lockdown is affecting your relationships

A team of experts is investigating how the coronavirus lockdown has impacted on people’s relationships and routines.

Social researchers from The University of Manchester alongside others from the University of Nottingham, London Metropolitan University and the University of East Anglia have launched a nationwide questionnaire to explore how personal relationships may have changed during lockdown, including how confinement has impacted domestic, work, leisure and social habits.

A similar study has successfully been carried out in France, which received more than 16,000 responses and found that women were the ‘great communicators’ of lockdown, developing new contacts and strengthening old friendships.

The researchers from the UK hope to be able to compare the responses, in order to assess the impact of lockdown across the two countries.

The anonymous survey is open to everyone, and can be completed on computers, tablets and smartphones. Participants will be asked questions about the conditions of their housing, their work situation - such as whether they have been furloughed or are working from home, as well as their daily activities both before and during lockdown. It will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

“The lockdown experience has been sudden, scary and disruptive to our everyday lives - our survey aims to capture how this unprecedented event has affected our relationships both with the people we live with, and those we share our lives with,” said Elisa Bellotti from The University of Manchester. “Did we reach out to friends, neighbours or colleagues to find or offer help? Did we reconnect with friends and relatives we hadn’t spoken to for a long time? Did we find ourselves overwhelmed by our relationships’ needs and requests? Has the pandemic ultimately shaped our significant social relations in unexpected ways?”