COVID 19 Mental Health Survey May 2020-May 2021

This data set assesses the mental health of four separate cohorts across mainly the UK and Germany each one at a different time point using an online survey. The COVID-19 exposure and COVID-19 related mental health survey was designed as an online survey using EvaSys (https://www.evasys.de, Electric Paper Evaluationssysteme GmbH, Luneburg, Germany), see Knolle et al. (2021, BMC psychology) or Daimer et al. (2021, Frontiers psychology)  for a detailed description. The questionnaires were available in German and English. For participant recruitment we used a snowball sampling strategy to reach the general public in Germany and the UK. The “Spring 2020 survey” was collected from 27/04/2020 - 31/05/2020, approximately five weeks after the introduction of the nationwide lockdowns in the UK and Germany. Completion of this first survey took approximately 35 min. The three follow-up surveys took only about 15 minutes, as they did not include question on subjective change of psychological distress (“Autumn 2020 survey”: 10/09/2020 – 18/10/2020; “Winter 2021 survey”: 10/01/2021 – 07/02/2021; “Spring 2021 survey”: 01/05/2021 – 31/05/2021).