TY - JOUR
T1 - Construing the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: A qualitative study
AU - Winter, David
AU - Hammoud, Razan
AU - Todorova, Irina
AU - Cipolletta, Sabrina
N1 - © 2024 the author(s). Published with license by taylor & francis group, llC. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
PY - 2024/1/21
Y1 - 2024/1/21
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic and measures used to contain it have had a significant psychosocial impact. This paper reports a study of its psychological effects in 108 UK residents who completed an online survey between the first and second waves of the pandemic asking them to describe the main difficulties that they experienced and how they coped with these, what they had learnt from the pandemic, and their anticipations of a post-pandemic future. Deductive thematic content analysis of the results in terms of diagnostic constructs of personal construct psychology identified overarching themes of transitions, with themes of anxiety, threat, loss of role, sadness, contempt, and stress; strategies, with themes of constriction, hostility, and individual coping strategies; reconstruction, including revision of superordinate constructs, revision of subordinate constructs, and no reconstruction; and anticipations, with themes of recovery of certainty and structure, constriction, dilation, aggression, and no anticipation. Two contrasting patterns were observed, one characterized by failure to reconstrue, hostility, and/or constriction, and the other by revision of superordinate constructs, dilation, and/or aggression.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic and measures used to contain it have had a significant psychosocial impact. This paper reports a study of its psychological effects in 108 UK residents who completed an online survey between the first and second waves of the pandemic asking them to describe the main difficulties that they experienced and how they coped with these, what they had learnt from the pandemic, and their anticipations of a post-pandemic future. Deductive thematic content analysis of the results in terms of diagnostic constructs of personal construct psychology identified overarching themes of transitions, with themes of anxiety, threat, loss of role, sadness, contempt, and stress; strategies, with themes of constriction, hostility, and individual coping strategies; reconstruction, including revision of superordinate constructs, revision of subordinate constructs, and no reconstruction; and anticipations, with themes of recovery of certainty and structure, constriction, dilation, aggression, and no anticipation. Two contrasting patterns were observed, one characterized by failure to reconstrue, hostility, and/or constriction, and the other by revision of superordinate constructs, dilation, and/or aggression.
KW - COVID-19 pandemic
KW - UK
KW - personal construct theory
KW - thematic content analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85182824493&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10720537.2023.2300058
DO - 10.1080/10720537.2023.2300058
M3 - Article
SN - 1072-0537
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Journal of Constructivist Psychology
JF - Journal of Constructivist Psychology
ER -