Values in Crisis - a Crisis of Values? Moral Values and Social Orientations under the Imprint of the Corona Pandemic

The Values in Crisis project seized the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to investigate whether, how and to what extent people’s moral values change as a result of a disruptive event of massive order and global scale. An online panel survey (CAWI) interviewed people aged 16 and over in Germany and 18 and over in the United Kingdom at three different stages of the pandemic: at the beginning, one year later in the midst of the pandemic and two years later towards the end. Its central thematic foci were the physical and psychological experience of COVID-19, moral values, personality traits, social orientations and ideological leaning, amended by basic socio-demographic information on gender, age, education, income, residence, religion and ethnicity. Quota sampling was employed in the first wave of data collection. The quotas were defined along gender, age, education and region for the respective country populations of age 16 and above (Germany), and 18 and above (United Kingdom) based on the information provided by the national statistical offices. The sample for Wave 2 consists exclusively of participants from Wave 1: Respondents who participated in the first wave were re-contacted and invited to participate in the second wave without quota-based screening. The samples for Wave 3 consist of re-contacted and newly recruited participants (refresher sample). The latter were invited only after the pool of to-be-re-contacted participants was exhausted and subjected to quota-based screening.<br>1. Experience of COVID-19: personal health consequences (tested positive, tested negative, mild symptoms (self), severe symptoms (self), mild symptoms (close people), severe symptoms (close people); socio-economic consequences due to Corona (lost job, closed business, part time work, home office, money from aid package, work as before, daycare my kids); worries about self and society: how afraid of getting sick from Corona; how afraid of economic recession due to Corona; evaluation of government measures; evaluation of own and others’ behavior in the corona crisis; more solidarity as usual vs. more hostility when meeting other people; country hurt vs. strengthened from the crisis; conspiracy theory receptivity: believe that corona is a hoax; assessing the credibility of social media vs. traditional media;
waves 2 and 3 only: importance of freedom vs. health protection; the restriction of civil rights and liberties due to the measures against the Corona Pandemic is justified vs. unjustified; agreement with the following statements: I have come very well to terms with life under the conditions of the pandemic, I am tired of seeking information about the current Corona rules and complying with them; attitudes towards vaccines: readiness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in regular intervals; who should get vaccinated against COVID-19 (nobody, at-risk groups only, anyone who wants to, everybody); in favor or against a compulsory COVID-19 mandate in the country; the restrictions should be lifted for vaccinated people; vaccination status.

2. Value orientations: Schwartz values (e.g. be creative, be rich, every person should be treated equally, etc.); sacred-secular, patriarchal-emancipative values: how proud to be citizen of the country; main goal in life to make parents proud, greater respect for authority good vs. bad; importance of religion in life; how religious; frequency of attending religious services; how justifiable is homosexuality, abortion and divorce; men are better political leaders than women, university education is more important for a boy, more right for men to a job when jobs scarce.

3. Personality traits (wave 1 only): BIG-Five (reserved, trusting, lazy, relaxed, have few artistic interests, outgoing, find fault with others, does a thorough job, get easily nervous, have active imagination); Davis’ empathy scale (concerned for less fortunate, protective towards people taken advantage of, touched by things happening, self-heated person).

4. Social and political orientations: most important goal for the country; second-most important goal for the country; institutional trust: confidence in the country’s government, health sector and institutions as a whole; interpersonal trust: trust in people known personally, trust in people met for the first time; most people would try to take advantage vs. would try to be fair; attitudes towards migration and diversity: let anyone come who wants to, let people come as long as there are jobs available, place strict limits on the number of foreigners who can come here, prohibit people from coming here from other countries; ethnic diversity erodes social cohesion vs. enriches social life; political priorities (solving our own country’s problems by ourselves vs. solving global problems in cooperation with other countries); political orientation (left-right self-placement);
populism (waves 2 and 3 only) wave 2: the people, and not politicians should make our most important decisions, the political differences between the elite and the people are larger than the differences among the people, elected officials talk too much and take too little action, wave 3: many important things happen in the world, which the public is never informed about, politicians usually do not tell us the true motives for their decisions, government agencies closely monitor all citizens, events which superficially seem to lack a connection are often the result of secret activities, there are secret organizations that greatly influence political decisions); perception of social cohesion and tensions (wave 3 only): rating the tension between each of the following groups in the country: poor and rich people, management and workers, men and women, old people and young people, different racial and ethnic groups, different religious groups, vaccinated people and unvaccinated people, supporters and opponents of the COVID-19 measures; as a result of the Corona pandemic, cohesion in the country’s society has become stronger, remained the same or become weaker; ranking of the current political system in the country.

5. Well-being: depression and anxiety (PHQ-4); loneliness; overall life and domain-level satisfaction (health condition, financial situation, social relations, work-life balance, life as a whole).

Demography: sex; year of birth; marital status, number of children; education; income period; income per week, month, year; household size, place of residence size, federal state (DE); Region (UK); wave 3 only: number of children from 0 to 12 years and from 13 to 18 years; employment status.

Additionally coded: Wave; country; respondent ID; interview date; total interview time (seconds); age (years); age (groups); education (low, middle, high - ISCED); weight.