TY - JOUR A1 - Kohler, Ulrich T1 - Survey Research Methods during the COVID-19 Crisis JF - Survey research methods KW - COVID-19 KW - Survey Research Methods Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7769 SN - 1864-3361 VL - 14 IS - 2 SP - 93 EP - 94 PB - European Survey Research Association CY - Konstanz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Li, Jianghong A1 - Bünning, Mareike A1 - Kaiser, Till A1 - Hipp, Lena T1 - Who suffered most? BT - parental stress and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany JF - Journal of family research N2 - Objective: This study examines gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parental psychological wellbeing (parenting stress and psychological distress) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Background: The dramatic shift of childcare and schooling responsibility from formal institutions to private households during the pandemic has put families under enormous stress and raised concerns about caregivers' health and wellbeing. Despite the overwhelming media attention to families’ wellbeing, to date limited research has examined parenting stress and parental psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Germany. Method: We analyzed four waves of panel data (N= 1,771) from an opt-in online survey, which was conducted between March 2020 and April 2021. Multivariable OLS regressions were used to estimate variations in the pandemic's effects on parenting stress and psychological distress by various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Results: Overall, levels of parenting stress and psychological distress increased during the pandemic. During the first and third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, mothers, parents with children younger than 11 years, parents with two or more children, parents working from home as well as parents with financial insecurity experienced higher parenting stress than other sociodemographic groups. Moreover, women, respondents with lower incomes, single parents, and parents with younger children experienced higher levels of psychological distress than other groups. Conclusion: Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in parents' psychological wellbeing increased among the study participants during the pandemic. KW - COVID-19 KW - parenting stress KW - gender inequality KW - mental health KW - psychological distress KW - Germany KW - children Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.20377/jfr-704 SN - 2699-2337 VL - 34 IS - 1 SP - 281 EP - 309 PB - University of Bamberg Press CY - Bamberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hipp, Lena A1 - Bünning, Mareike T1 - Parenthood as a driver of increased genderinequality during COVID-19? BT - exploratory evidence from Germany JF - European societies N2 - Drawing on three waves of survey data from a non-probability sample from Germany, this paper examines two opposing expectations about the pandemic's impacts on gender equality: The optimistic view suggests that gender equality has increased, as essential workers in Germany have been predominantly female and as fathers have had more time for childcare. The pessimistic view posits that lockdowns have also negatively affected women's jobs and that mothers had to shoulder the additional care responsibilities. Overall, our exploratory analyses provide more evidence supporting the latter view. Parents were more likely than non-parents to work fewer hours during the pandemic than before, and mothers were more likely than fathers to work fewer hours once lockdowns were lifted. Moreover, even though parents tended to divide childcare more evenly, at least temporarily, mothers still shouldered more childcare work than fathers. The division of housework remained largely unchanged. It is therefore unsurprising that women, in particular mothers, reported lower satisfaction during the observation period. Essential workers experienced fewer changes in their working lives than respondents in other occupations. KW - COVID-19 KW - gender KW - family KW - employment KW - division of labour KW - satisfaction Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/14616696.2020.1833229 SN - 1461-6696 SN - 1469-8307 VL - 23 SP - S658 EP - S673 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hipp, Lena A1 - Bünning, Mareike A1 - Munnes, Stefan A1 - Sauermann, Armin T1 - Problems and pitfalls of retrospective survey questions in COVID-19 studies JF - Survey research methods N2 - This paper examines and discusses the biases and pitfalls of retrospective survey questions that are currently being used in many medical, epidemiological, and sociological studies on the COVID-19 pandemic. By analyzing the consistency of answers to retrospective questions provided by respondents who participated in the first two waves of a survey on the social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, we illustrate the insights generated by a large body of survey research on the use of retrospective questions and recall accuracy. KW - COVID-19 KW - retrospective questions KW - recall accuracy Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7741 SN - 1864-3361 VL - 14 IS - 2 SP - 109 EP - 113 PB - European Survey Research Association CY - Konstanz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Graeber, Daniel A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Seebauer, Johannes T1 - COVID-19 BT - a crisis of the female self-employed JF - Journal of population economics N2 - We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic and the government-mandated measures to contain its spread affect the self-employed — particularly women — in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are about one-third more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. We do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, e.g., the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship. KW - self-employed KW - COVID-19 KW - income KW - gender KW - representative real-time survey data KW - decomposition methods Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-021-00849-y SN - 0933-1433 SN - 1432-1475 VL - 34 IS - 4 SP - 1141 EP - 1187 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Forster, Timon A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa T1 - Reacting, fast and slow BT - how world leaders shaped government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic JF - Journal of European public policy N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic created extraordinary challenges for governments to safeguard the well-being of their people. To what extent has leaders' reliance on scientific advice shaped government responses to the COVID-19 outbreak? We argue that leaders who tend to orient themselves on expert advice realized the extent of the crisis earlier. Consequently, these governments would adopt containment measures relatively quickly, despite the high uncertainty they faced. Over time, differences in government responses based on the use of science would dissipate due to herding effects. We test our argument on data combining 163 government responses to the pandemic with national- and individual-level characteristics. Consistent with our argument, we find that countries governed by politicians with a stronger technocratic mentality, approximated by holding a PhD, adopted restrictive containment measures faster in the early, but not in the later, stages of the crisis. This importance of expert-based leadership plausibly extends to other large-scale societal crises. KW - crisis KW - leadership KW - expertise KW - COVID-19 KW - policy-making KW - public health Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2021.1942157 SN - 1350-1763 SN - 1466-4429 VL - 28 IS - 8 SP - 1299 EP - 1320 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Post, Julia C. A1 - Class, Fabian A1 - Kohler, Ulrich T1 - Unit nonresponse biases in estimates of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence JF - Survey research methods N2 - Since COVID-19 became a pandemic, many studies are being conducted to get a better understanding of the disease itself and its spread. One crucial indicator is the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Since this measure is an important foundation for political decisions, its estimate must be reliable and unbiased. This paper presents reasons for biases in prevalence estimates due to unit nonresponse in typical studies. Since it is difficult to avoid bias in situations with mostly unknown nonresponse mechanisms, we propose the maximum amount of bias as one measure to assess the uncertainty due to nonresponse. An interactive web application is presented that calculates the limits of such a conservative unit nonresponse confidence interval (CUNCI). KW - COVID-19 KW - prevalence KW - probability samples KW - unit nonresponse KW - conservative confidence limits KW - nonresponse bias Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2020.v14i2.7755 SN - 1864-3361 VL - 14 IS - 2 SP - 115 EP - 121 PB - European Survey Research Association CY - Duisburg ER -