Taking part in the RESISTIRÉ study: FAQ

RESISTIRÉ: RESpondIng to outbreaks through co-creaTIve sustainable inclusive equality stRatEgies.

RESISTIRÉ is a two-year EU Horizon 2020 funded project designed to advance knowledge for the clinical and public health response to the 2019-nCoV epidemic. RESISTIRÉ relies on a multi-disciplinary consortium of ten European research, innovation, and design partners. The project will provide in-depth knowledge and understanding of existing problems, as well as current and future priorities and solutions. As a result, it will contribute to the reduction of inequalities arising from COVID-19 policy and how to redress them.

The aims of RESISTIRÉ are to:

1) understand the impact of COVID-19 policy responses on behavioural, social and economic inequalities in the EU27, Serbia, Turkey and the UK on the basis of a conceptual gender+ framework, and

2) design, devise and pilot policy solutions and social innovations to be deployed by policymakers, stakeholders and actors in different policy domains.

The RESISTIRÉ app supports overall research aims by collecting quantitative indicators on the attitudes and experiences of people experiencing the pandemic across Europe. This will help us measure and monitor the economic, social and environmental impacts of health policies. This research aims to examine how COVID-19 and its policy responses has possibly exposed groups in Europe to socio-economic risk factors related to identity features (including, race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers.)

You have been invited to participate in the study since you are over 18 and have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic in one of the countries of interest. You will have been invited to participate in one of the following ways:

1) an open call through the RESISTIRÉ (or related partners’) media channels,

2) shared by personal contacts/networks,

3) an open call shared by RESISTIRÉ partners, such as NGOs and other organisations that work on health, economic and societal inequalities.

Before taking part in the study, we will ask you to complete a short set of questions (no more than 5 minutes) about your socio-demographic background. Once you have completed this, you will be asked to complete a series of surveys (taking around 10 minutes each) on your experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. We will ask you questions about your attitudes and perspectives on how the pandemic has impacted areas such as employment, pay and savings, childcare etc.

This research is designed as a longitudinal study tracking pandemic responses over time and new sets of questions will be released over the coming months. We will send notifications when new questions are available to answer on COVID-19 pandemic related topics.

Participation in this research is voluntary and it is up to you to decide whether or not to take part in this research study. Participation or non-participation in the project, and any subsequent withdrawal, are available options throughout the study process. If you do decide to take part you will be given access and be able to proceed to undertake surveys on the application. Having received details about the study, you will be asked to give your consent when you sign up to the app. If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw at any time and without giving a reason using the Update Consent option within the menu of the application. If you have any questions regarding this study and to enable you to take an informed decision about whether to participate or not, please feel free to contact us using the email address provided below.

Participating in the RESISTIRÉ research study will involve a minor time commitment to set up the application and respond to study questions. We estimate application set-up, including reading study related information, privacy notice, consent, and socio-demographic information will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Each survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Most questions are optional and you are free to withdraw participation at any point using the Update Consent menu option.

Your responses will contribute to increasing knowledge and understanding of existing problems, as well as current and future priorities and solutions with COVID-19 policy responses. Your participation will contribute towards developing future policies with the aim of reducing inequalities arising during the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

All the information that you provide will be kept strictly confidential and your email will not be shared with third parties. The only people who will have access to the records are the members of the research team. While the research is in progress, survey responses will be password-protected and stored securely in the researchers’ computers.

Data generated by the study will be retained in accordance with the University’s policy on Academic Integrity. Data generated in the course of the research will be kept securely in paper or electronic form for a period of ten years after the completion of the research project.

Anything that is written for publication will protect the personal information and the privacy of the individuals involved. The findings of this study will be presented in an aggregated and anonymised format in a summary report that will discuss the overall findings. In order to protect confidentiality, no specific reference will be made to individuals or other identifying features.

We have a duty to point out that there are some legal limitations to data confidentiality and that in some exceptional situations it is possible for data to be subject to subpoena, freedom of information claim or mandated reporting by some professions.

The University Research Ethics Committee, Oxford Brookes University, has approved the research. If you have any concerns about the conduct of this project you should contact the Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee on ethics@brookes.ac.uk.

If you would like to participate, please proceed through the welcome message on the app where you will be asked to provide your consent to opt-in. Once you login, you can proceed to taking the surveys.

After providing your consent, you will be asked to provide an optional email for receiving updates about the results of this research, this is not for research purposes and will not be associated with your responses. Results and outcomes from the study will be available on the RESISTIRE website.

As well as project reports, the researchers will use the aggregated and anonymised survey data within conference papers and publications on this topic.

The project will publish its results as well as produced datasets via the open access repository Zenodo, which is the recommended repository by the EU OpenAIRE initiative, hosted at CERN. It is a general purpose open access repository which allows researchers to deposit research papers, datasets, research software, reports and any other related digital artifacts

This research is conducted by Dr. Charoula Tzanakou (Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice), Dr. Selin Nugent (Faculty Technology, Design & Environment) and Dr Clare Stovell (Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice) along with colleagues at the Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice, all at Oxford Brookes University.

This research is part of a collaborative research project led by the European Science Foundation and funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Programme. The project involves a ten-partner European consortium and a network of researchers in the EU, the UK, Serbia, Iceland, and Turkey. The coordinator is the European Science Foundation in France. The project is funded with 5,2 million EUR from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program and will last for two years starting in April 2021. Project partners are European Science Foundation (France), Örebro University (Sweden), Yellow Window (Belgium), Oxford Brookes University (United Kingdom), Knowledge & Innovation (Italy), Technological University Dublin (Ireland), Sabanci University (Turkey), Universidad de Deusto (Spain), Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Science of the Czech Republic (Czech Republic), and Sciensano (Belgium).

This research has been approved by the University Research Ethics Committee, Oxford Brookes University.

Should you have additional questions or concerns, please contact resistireapp@brookes.ac.uk.  If you have any concerns about the way in which the study has been conducted, please contact the Chair of the Oxford Brookes University Research Ethics Committee on ethics@brookes.ac.uk.