Life during lockdown: Re-exploring experiences, behaviours and perceptions of risk during the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK

Graphic showing two people distancing from a virus

Read the Participant Information Sheet v6.2 [pdf]

Key info

Open to anyone living in the UK aged 18+, but we are particularly keen to hear from people who:

  • Have been shielding or advised to shield during the outbreak
  • OR Are living with a chronic condition
  • OR Have been heavily affected by the outbreak
  • OR Don't typically take part in research

Closed at 11pm on Friday 3 July.

What's the aim?


Just prior to lockdown on 23 March 2020, we carried out a national survey (17-18 March 2020) that explored the public’s attitudes to the outbreak and their willingness and ability to follow Government guidance on social distancing and working from home.

To manage the outbreak effectively, it’s important to understand how people are feeling and behaving. Getting people to distance themselves from others, encouraging more frequent hand washing and asking households to self-isolate if someone develops symptoms of COVID-19 are all steps that have been introduced to help slow the spread of the virus. This helps to relieve pressure on healthcare systems and provide researchers more time to understand the virus and develop effective treatments or a vaccine. However, these behaviours are voluntary and people’s willingness and/or ability to do them depend on their circumstances and health status, as highlighted by our previous survey.

As we ease out of lockdown, we want to revisit the public’s views, behaviours and experiences of the COVID-19 outbreak to see how people are feeling and responding today, and how these compare to life before lockdown. We also work closely with the Imperial College COVID-19 modelling teams who use a variety of data to understand and predict the spread of the outbreak and how best to contain it. Information on people’s movements and contacts can feed into these predictions. Therefore, it’s important to ensure this data accurately reflects the diversity of views and behaviours in the UK.

We hope to use our connections with public advisors and community networks to reach a diverse range of perspectives, particularly those that are often underrepresented in research.

What will I be asked to do?

We are inviting anyone living in the UK aged 18+ to take part in an anonymous online survey as part of our research project.
The survey takes 20–30 minutes to complete.

Topics covered include:

  • Current health and well-being
  • Attitudes to risk and the steps you are taking to protect yourself and others
  • Number of recent contacts (with different people)
  • Experiences of shielding (if relevant)
  • Thoughts on self-isolation and the Test and Trace programme
  • Engagement with science and research
  • About you (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, education level, employment status etc - all optional)

All questions in the research survey are optional and all information will be treated anonymously, confidentially and will never be linked to your identity.

How do I take part?

This survey closed on Friday 3 July. We will now be taking time to review and analyse the responses and hope to be able to report the findings soon.

If needed, here is the Participant Information Sheet v6.2 (dated 26.06.20) - pdf‌ if you want learn more about what was involved.

If you have any questions, please get in touch by emailing patientexperience@imperial.ac.uk.

Will I get anything for taking part?

There are no direct benefits to you for taking part in the survey. However, your responses to the survey will provide important information to help us understand how people are feeling and responding, including whether certain groups are more severely affected by the outbreak than others and what people are willing and able to do to limit the spread. This can help improve decisions made about how the UK continues to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.

Learn more about how Imperial College London is responding to the outbreak