{"id":51921,"date":"2020-04-19T00:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T07:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=51921"},"modified":"2020-04-18T15:48:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-18T22:48:54","slug":"what-social-science-can-offer-us-in-a-time-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/what-social-science-can-offer-us-in-a-time-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"What social science can offer us in a time of Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

First, a confession.\u00a0I am struggling to accept the magnitude of this crisis. I\u2019m reading the news, registering the numbers, following the London lockdown rules to the letter, but there are obvious signs that I\u2019m in denial about this continuing for more than a few weeks. I spend my days silently mouthing \u201cIt will all be over soon, it will all be over soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

A recent\u00a0article<\/a> in the Harvard Business Review\u00a0compared what we\u2019re experiencing to grief \u2013 we are mourning the loss of our previous lives and selves. That feels right to me, and while I seem stuck in the denial stage, others appear to have catapulted through to acceptance far more quickly. What factors predict their seemingly superior ability to cope with lockdown? Why will some people\u2019s mental health suffer more than others over the coming months? Why are some seeing this as\u00a0an opportunity for a new and better world to emerge<\/a>, while others (myself included) are finding far less to be cheerful about?<\/p>\n

This is just one strand of social science questions emerging from Covid-19. Will existing theories about the factors that shape our responses to crises and isolation hold true in these new circumstances? Early\u00a0data from the Pew Research Centre<\/a>\u00a0suggest that women, young people and those with lower incomes, as well as \u201cthose whose jobs or income have been cut<\/a>\u00a0by the outbreak\u201d, are \u201cmore likely than other groups to fall into the high distress category\u201d. New findings on who is suffering most from loneliness in lockdown vary by country. In one recent\u00a0US survey<\/a>\u00a0it is the young, while\u00a0an unpublished study by Soubhik Barari and others<\/a>\u00a0suggests that in Italy it is older people.<\/p>\n

A global crisis like this provides us with a gruesome natural experiment. As social scientists around the world share early findings, other questions are beginning to form in my mind: namely, will this ultimately be a good or bad thing for the social sciences? Will they generate\u00a0a huge range of new questions,<\/a>\u00a0leading to a fresh appreciation of their\u00a0importance in helping us tackle major global challenges<\/a>? Will people turn to social scientists for answers, or will trust in them be damaged by the emergence of fault lines between competing theories and disciplines?<\/p>\n

Any increased attention will come with increased scrutiny, from within the community and outside. After what must have been a record number of mentions of \u201cbehavioural science\u201d in\u00a0the UK government\u2019s press conference last month,<\/a>\u00a0I watched in fascination as\u00a0600 behavioural scientists penned an open letter<\/a>\u00a0questioning the government\u2019s decision to delay enacting social distancing policies on the basis of \u201cbehavioural fatigue\u201d. This called for \u201ca clear indication how behavioural fatigue features in the decision-making and modelling, and any behavioural evidence for the phenomenon\u201d, since \u201cthere is no sound evidence base to suggest that behavioural fatigue would undermine early interventions based on social distancing\u201d.<\/p>\n

I expected criticism from outside academia (and found plenty of \u201cBehavioural science? Don\u2019t make me laugh\u201d tweets), but the questioning of evidence from within the behavioural science community was a stark reminder of how many different perspectives there are even within disciplines.\u00a0And I was saddened by the number of social scientists on Twitter\u00a0and\u00a0elsewhere<\/a>\u00a0complaining that the government was listening to social science at all and suggesting it should prioritise the advice of medical experts, because, in a pandemic, they were the only \u201creal experts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Recent events such as the backlash against\u00a0White House trade adviser Peter Navarro<\/a>\u00a0when he cited his background as a social scientist in a discussion\u00a0about the value of an anti-malaria drug suggest that social scientists need to stick to their discipline if they are to be taken seriously as experts. And yet it\u2019s clear they have a vital role to play. Reflecting on lessons learned from the Ebola crisis of 2013-16,\u00a0Margaret Chan, former director-general of the World Health Organisation,\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cinadequate engagement with affected communities and families\u201d posed a significant obstacle in developing an effective response and called for \u201cmultidisciplinary approaches to community engagement, informed by anthropology and other social sciences\u201d.<\/p>\n

As the crisis continues and our social world gets remade, there is no doubt that the research agenda of social scientists will change profoundly. Whether this becomes a defining moment for them in other ways, it\u2019s perhaps too early to judge. But it does feel as though this is the time for the whole to become greater than the sum of its parts, and for specialists to bring their expertise and insight together not just to cope with the crisis but to help promote a regrowth of culture, society and economy in ways that enable future generations to flourish.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Katie Metzler is associate vice president at SAGE Publishing and has worked in social science academic publishing for more than 15 years.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, a confession.\u00a0I am struggling to accept the magnitude of this crisis. I\u2019m reading the news, registering the numbers, following the London lockdown rules to the letter, but there are obvious signs that I\u2019m in denial about this continuing for more than a few weeks. I spend my days silently mouthing \u201cIt will all be […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":51922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[224419],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-51921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-social-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat social science can offer us in a time of Covid-19 - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/what-social-science-can-offer-us-in-a-time-of-covid-19\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What social science can offer us in a time of Covid-19 - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First, a confession.\u00a0I am struggling to accept the magnitude of this crisis. 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