How Modulians Cope with Corona?

Faculty Research

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At the end of May 2020, the MU Department of Sustainability, Governance, and Methods launched a questionnaire about coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. The questionnaire addressed students, faculty and staff, and its aim was to collect qualitative and quantitative information about the emotional burden experienced as a result of the crisis as well as the coping strategies applied.
Professor Ivo Ponochny presents the survey´s preliminary results:

“At the moment, we can only give the first impression based on Modul staff and faculty questionnaire responses. For privacy reasons and due to the small sample size, only very rough tendencies are reported and no concrete numbers given.

The burden due to the Corona situation has varied extremely and comes close to a uniform distribution
We see that some people are highly burdened, while others are not burdened at all. Rather than individual loneliness or depression, the most problematic issue was separation from family members. Correspondingly, experienced fear is less about oneself and more about the loved ones. Virtually keeping in touch with friends and relatives (and, of course, professional contacts) seems to be a well-working habit.

Critical light is shed on the more professional ways of organizing oneself
About a half of the respondents report excessive time spent on their computers or working. Nevertheless, hardly anybody undertakes the effort of explicit time planning and conscious scheduling for leisure and family time. Not even those for whom dissatisfaction with their time use is an issue.The other half (about 50%), however, see the situation surrounding COVID-19 pandemic also as a time-saver, leaving opportunities to use the saved time in a meaningful way, such as for sports, for relaxation or hobbies, for reading, or for the family.

There are two dominant countermeasures to feeling burdened by the situation: talking to other people, and keeping a positive attitude 
Only about 50% of respondents, however, had implemented their favorite measure on the day they were asked about it– mostly for lack of time. In turn, half of those admitted that the stated reason for not following their own recommendation was not a convincing one.

As a conclusion, we may say that low-level actions are taken to a quite satisfying extent, but that advanced reactions to the situations such as thought-out time management still seem to be a missed opportunity.”

You can still participate in the survey and get an impression of how well you cope with the crisis.
Recommendations how to cope with the negative side effects of COVID-19 pandemic can be found here.

 #staysafe #savelives