Project Summary
This dataset contains all qualitative and quantitative data collected in the first phase of the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP). PJP is a combined journaling platform and interdisciplinary, mixed-methods research study developed by two anthropologists, with support from a team of colleagues and students across the social sciences, humanities, and health fields. PJP launched in Spring 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was emerging in the United States.
PJP was created in order to “pre-design an archive” of COVID-19 narratives and experiences open to anyone around the world. The project is rooted in a commitment to democratizing knowledge production, in the spirit of “archival activism” and using methods of “grassroots collaborative ethnography” (Willen et al. 2022; Wurtz et al. 2022; Zhang et al 2020; see also Carney 2021). The motto on the PJP website encapsulates these commitments: “Usually, history is written only by the powerful. When the history of COVID-19 is written, let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.” (A version of this Project Summary with links to the PJP website and other relevant sites is included in the public documentation of the project at QDR.)
In PJP’s first phase (PJP-1), the project provided a digital space where participants could create weekly journals of their COVID-19 experiences using a smartphone or computer. The platform was designed to be accessible to as wide a range of potential participants as possible. Anyone aged 15 or older, living anywhere in the world, could create journal entries using their choice of text, images, and/or audio recordings. The interface was accessible in English and Spanish, but participants could submit text and audio in any language. PJP-1 ran on a weekly basis from May 2020 to May 2022.
Data Overview
This Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) project contains all journal entries and closed-ended survey responses submitted during PJP-1, along with accompanying descriptive and explanatory materials. The dataset includes individual journal entries and accompanying quantitative survey responses from more than 1,800 participants in 55 countries. Of nearly 27,000 journal entries in total, over 2,700 included images and over 300 are audio files. All data were collected via the Qualtrics survey platform. PJP-1 was approved as a research study by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Connecticut.
Participants were introduced to the project in a variety of ways, including through the PJP website as well as professional networks, PJP’s social media accounts (on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) , and media coverage of the project. Participants provided a single piece of contact information — an email address or mobile phone number — which was used to distribute weekly invitations to participate. This contact information has been stripped from the dataset and will not be accessible to researchers.
PJP uses a mixed-methods research approach and a dynamic cohort design. After enrolling in PJP-1 via the project’s website, participants received weekly invitations to contribute to their journals via their choice of email or SMS (text message). Each weekly invitation included a link to that week’s journaling prompts and accompanying survey questions. Participants could join at any point, and they could stop participating at any point as well. They also could stop participating and later restart. Retention was encouraged with a monthly raffle of three $100 gift cards. All individuals who had contributed that month were eligible.
Regardless of when they joined, all participants received the project’s narrative prompts and accompanying survey questions in the same order. In Week 1, before contributing their first journal entries, participants were presented with a baseline survey that collected demographic information, including political leanings, as well as self-reported data about COVID-19 exposure and physical and mental health status. Some of these survey questions were repeated at periodic intervals in subsequent weeks, providing quantitative measures of change over time that can be analyzed in conjunction with participants' qualitative entries. Surveys employed validated questions where possible.
The core of PJP-1 involved two weekly opportunities to create journal entries in the format of their choice (text, image, and/or audio). Each week, journalers received a link with an invitation to create one entry in response to a recurring narrative prompt (“How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your life in the past week?”) and a second journal entry in response to their choice of two more tightly focused prompts. Typically the pair of prompts included one focusing on subjective experience (e.g., the impact of the pandemic on relationships, sense of social connectedness, or mental health) and another with an external focus (e.g., key sources of scientific information, trust in government, or COVID-19’s economic impact). Each week, participants also were offered an optional third opportunity to share anything else they wished to include.
Individual participants in PJP-1 could download their own journals at any point via PJP’s secure interface. In addition, the PJP team maintained a curated “Featured Entries” page displaying journal entries that contributors gave permission to share in that public space. Research Products
As of September 2023, PJP has generated a growing array of research publications in health, human rights, humanities, and anthropology journals. It has also generated an international multimedia exhibition (Picturing the Pandemic: Images from the Pandemic Journaling Project) with four sites in three countries. The PJP team is depositing PJP-1 data at QDR in order to make it possible for other scholars to conduct analyses of PJP materials and produce additional research products. All participants who gave consent to participate in PJP-1 agreed to have their data deposited for sharing with other researchers. Data Access
For a period of 25 years, through 2048, PJP-1 data will be accessible via QDR to interested researchers who obtain appropriate permissions and follow QDR data protection protocols as well as the procedures and policies of their own institutions’ IRBs. For the first five years, through 2028, all data requests must also be reviewed and approved by the PJP Principal Investigators following the procedures outlined in PJP’s Terms of Access Agreement. From 2049 onward, all PJP-1 data will become a fully accessible public archive via QDR.
The PJP-1 dataset is being made available in conjunction with a smaller collection of journaling and interview materials collected in Spring 2020 by Nancy Jacobs and Lorato Trok from a group of teenage students in South Africa. Having collected these materials in the same spirit of archival activism as PJP, Jacobs and Trok requested that they be archived alongside the PJP-1 dataset.
Organization of the Project
For ease of use, we recommend viewing data files in 'Tree' mode.
This project contains the full PJP-1 dataset, along with an accompanying set of documents that are included to help users understand the design, scope, implementation, and public-facing dimensions of the Pandemic Journaling Project.
A full Table of Contents for the project can be found in the public documentation of the project at QDR. Broadly, all project materials are organized into three categories:
A. PJP-1 Descriptive Materials
B. PJP Background Materials
C. PJP-1 Data Files |
