Going Virtual: Building Online Collaborations to Understand COVID-19’s Psychosocial Impacts on New York City Adults

Abstract

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic altered the research landscape dramatically, but the need to understand impacts on communities through research was as great as ever. In this paper, we detail the adaptive processes we leveraged to bring a network of community and academic partners together virtually and collaboratively build a survey reaching diverse populations, the challenges we faced, and what ultimately facilitated our success. The largest driver of our work was our shared goal of gaining a better understanding of the psychosocial impacts of the pandemic on New Yorkers in order to address their needs more meaningfully. Pre-existing relationships with community partners and flexible working processes grounded in equity also supported the functioning of the team. While participant recruitment proved to be challenging, the team pivoted and employed several strategies to reach our intended audiences and increase participation. This paper includes community stakeholders’ reflections on facilitators and barriers to survey development and recruitment in the context of a pandemic, as well as considerations for moving forward with virtual community-engaged research under challenging circumstances. In addition to sharing the collaborative processes that we built, our research-to-action network’s outputs, and our reflections on successes and roadblocks we faced, this paper highlights lessons in the importance of flexibility, trust, and innovation when conducting collaborative research during rapidly evolving public health crises.

Participatory Action Research Challenges Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review and Comparison across Two European Projects

“…Sometimes, these challenges were associated with technological accessibility issues as well, either because the existing digital methods failed and forced the researchers to improvise [45], or due to participants being unable to work with certain necessary tools, prompting the adoption of alternative ones [40].…”

“…Saeed [10] also comment on how the stressful conditions the pandemic forced upon the general population were a hindrance to recruitment-resulting in their participants dropping-out of the project in large numbers. Similarly, Madden et al [45] explain how fear of the disease itself kept community members from interacting with the researchers who visited them to hand out flyers in an attempt to recruit participants.…”

“…This may include "talking to black screens with their video off ", as Saeed [10] put it, or even the reduced length of online interactions when compared to in-presence events [39], all of which slow the process of establishing relationships with participants. Additionally, adopting less personal recruitment methods (listservs, social media) as a result of pandemic restrictions also impacted participant trust according to Madden et al [45].…”