Study title

The Values in Crisis project seized the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to investigate whether, how and to what extent people’s moral values change as a result of a disruptive event of massive order and global scale. An online panel survey (CAWI) interviewed people aged 16 and over in Germany and 18 and over in the United Kingdom at three different stages of the pandemic: at the beginning, one year later in the midst of the pandemic and two years later towards the end. Its central thematic foci were the physical and psychological experience of COVID-19, moral values, personality traits, social orientations and ideological leaning, amended by basic socio-demographic information on gender, age, education, income, residence, religion and ethnicity. Quota sampling was employed in the first wave of data collection. The quotas were defined along gender, age, education and region for the respective country populations of age 16 and above (Germany), and 18 and above (United Kingdom) based on the information provided by the national statistical offices. The sample for Wave 2 consists exclusively of participants from Wave 1: Respondents who participated in the first wave were re-contacted and invited to participate in the second wave without quota-based screening. The samples for Wave 3 consist of re-contacted and newly recruited participants (refresher sample). The latter were invited only after the pool of to-be-re-contacted participants was exhausted and subjected to quota-based screening.1. Experience of COVID-19: personal health consequences (tested positive, tested negative, mild symptoms (self), severe symptoms (self), mild symptoms (close people), severe symptoms (close people); socio-economic consequences due to Corona (lost job, closed business, part time work, home office, money from aid package, work as before, daycare my kids); worries about self and society: how afraid of getting sick from Corona; how afraid of economic recession due to Corona;...