Thinking Beyond COVID-19: Project Overview

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic has numerous psychological consequences, including increased threat, uncertainty and isolation. In a global longitudinal online study, we are investigating how these factors affect future thinking and mental health in individuals across the lifespan, and how these relationships change across the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, we are tracking the development of personal and collective narratives about the pandemic. Following an entry survey (S0) and survey 1 (S1) in May 2020, surveys are being run every 1-3 months to capture experience, mood and future thoughts through the various waves of the pandemic. In total, 12 surveys will be collected between May 2020 and May 2022. This open-ended preregistration describes overarching aims and questions motivating this research, general methods and procedures for recruitment (and characteristics of the S0 sample) and data collection, all tasks used and variables of interest. Due to the scope and size of this dataset, we will conduct a series of sub-studies that address more constrained research questions; for each sub-study, specific predictions, methods and analyses will be published in separate pre-registration plans in association with this project overview, enabling us to be more transparent about our knowledge of the data at the time of each set of analyses.