LoneCovid - Development and Significance of Social Relationships in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The aim of the LoneCovid project is to investigate how personal social networks in Germany evolved during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these changes affected individuals’ mental health, trust in political and scientific institutions, and compliance with political measures. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal ego-centered network survey with participants from the GESIS Panel.pop. From a stratified random sample of 961 online panel members, 159 took part in 2023 and 118 in 2024. One-on-one video interviews were conducted via Zoom using Network Canvas. Participants (“egos”) listed up to 20 people (“alters”) they had interacted with in the past two months and provided information on each alter’s characteristics, their relationship, and connections among alters. In 2023, a short online pre-survey collected demographic and mental health information, followed by a retrospective module reconstructing pre-pandemic networks. The 2024 interviews repeated the network survey to capture post-pandemic networks and changes over time. Interviews were conducted by trained researchers. Each data collection wave included measures on (1) Ego-level variables: demographics, loneliness, depressive symptoms, pandemic-related behaviors, and life events, (2) Ego–alter variables: characteristics of each contact (e.g., age, gender) and relationship-specific information between ego and alter (e.g., frequency of contact, closeness) and (3) Network structure: interconnections among alters, allowing calculation of structural indicators such as network density. In the first wave, a retrospective module captured changes in participants’ personal networks during the COVID-19 pandemic. For data publication, all information was aggregated at the ego level to ensure anonymity and data protection.