The RW3D: A multi-modal panel dataset to understand the psychological impact of the pandemic
This provides a unique multi-modal dataset for researchers studying the pandemic's psychological effects, but it is incremental as it focuses on data collection rather than new methods.
The researchers tackled the need for data on the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by introducing the Real World Worry Waves Dataset (RW3D), which combines free-text responses with survey data from UK participants over three years (2020: n=2441, 2021: n=1716, 2022: n=1152).
Besides far-reaching public health consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant psychological impact on people around the world. To gain further insight into this matter, we introduce the Real World Worry Waves Dataset (RW3D). The dataset combines rich open-ended free-text responses with survey data on emotions, significant life events, and psychological stressors in a repeated-measures design in the UK over three years (2020: n=2441, 2021: n=1716 and 2022: n=1152). This paper provides background information on the data collection procedure, the recorded variables, participants' demographics, and higher-order psychological and text-based derived variables that emerged from the data. The RW3D is a unique primary data resource that could inspire new research questions on the psychological impact of the pandemic, especially those that connect modalities (here: text data, psychological survey variables and demographics) over time.