Data for: Fighting a New Enemy: How the Pandemic Changed the Role of Firefighters published by RAC-Revista de Administração Contemporânea

Method: A cross-sectional study with a quantitative approach was conducted using a survey strategy applied to firefighters from a state in southeastern Brazil. Exploratory factor analysis of a sample of 382 participants was employed to explore the underlying structure of the data and reduce its dimensionality. Subsequently, the median test was used to compare the central tendency between non-parametric samples.
H1: Firefighters’ perceived discretion was not significantly altered during the pandemic.
H2: Individual aspects of firefighters’ work were not significantly altered during the pandemic.
H3: Institutional aspects of firefighters’ work were not significantly altered during the pandemic.
Results: The findings revealed significant differences in individual aspects of firefighters' performance during the pandemic but not in institutional factors or perceived discretion. There was an increase in the variance of individual aspects during the pandemic, suggesting greater heterogeneity in participants’ responses. On the other hand, the reduction in response skewness indicated a shift in data distribution, making it more symmetrical.