The Social And Behavioral Response To Coronavirus​

With the spread of the novel coronavirus and its attendant COVID-19 outbreak, social and behavioral science is being deployed to assuage fears, understand risk, improve public health and implement social distancing strategies. These articles and resources seek to assist in that educational effort. In addition, you can find external resources on COVID-19 such as advice and guidelines from the WHO, CDC, and Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, among others. 

Survey Sees HE Faculty Embracing Digital Changes 

Survey Sees HE Faculty Embracing Digital Changes 

SAGE’s 2022 pedagogy survey, building on prior annual surveys launched in 2020 and repeated in 2021, show some exciting developments in faculty […]

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Richard Heller: Universities Should Be Digital and Distributed

Richard Heller: Universities Should Be Digital and Distributed

In his new book, Richard Heller proposes a model he calls the distributed university – that is, a university that distributes education online to where it is needed.

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Gearing Up or Burning Out? Survey Findings Show Wellbeing is Top Concern for Higher Ed Faculty

Gearing Up or Burning Out? Survey Findings Show Wellbeing is Top Concern for Higher Ed Faculty

Academic staff have been working harder than ever, and after an incredibly tough 18 months they are now prioritizing their wellbeing as a top concern. What can academic publishers learn from this?

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Remote vs. In-Person University Classes: What Did We Know Before COVID?

Remote vs. In-Person University Classes: What Did We Know Before COVID?

Prior to the pandemic, Kevin O’Neill and his colleagues conducted a study of how undergraduates at a public university in Canada chose which courses to take online.

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2020 Social and Behavioral Science Conferences

Status List of 2020 Social Science Conference Cancellations

Status List of 2020 Social Science Conference Cancellations

Status List of 2020 Social and Behavioral Science Conferences Amid concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus and its accompanying disease, […]

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Let us know about your meeting’s status: Send a quick email to michael.todd@sagepub.com

Applying social and behavioral insights

Webinar: Research in Global Crisis

Webinar: Research in Global Crisis

Research is highly difficult during global crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, but at the same time essential, again as […]

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Mercury Project Names First Cohort to Fight Health Misinformation and Increase Vaccine Uptake

Mercury Project Names First Cohort to Fight Health Misinformation and Increase Vaccine Uptake

Through the SSRC’s Mercury Project, a first cohort of 12 teams from 17 countries is tasked with researching locally tailored solutions on how bad health information spreads, how to combat it, how to build stronger information systems, and how to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates.

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Understanding the Needs of New Hires in a Post-COVID World of the Virtual Workplace

Understanding the Needs of New Hires in a Post-COVID World of the Virtual Workplace

The authors found the unique conditions of working during the pandemic created a natural portal into understanding remote work habits.

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Pandemic Management – The Path Not Taken

Pandemic Management – The Path Not Taken

New data from the WHO show that during the pandemic’s first two years, Sweden had half the excess death rate of the UK, Germany or Spain – and a quarter of the excess death rate of many countries in Eastern Europe.

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Coronavirus Impacts

There’s Something In the Air…But Is It a Virus? Part 1

There’s Something In the Air…But Is It a Virus? Part 1

The historic Hippocrates has become an iconic figure in the creation myths of medicine. What can the body of thought attributed to him tell us about modern responses to COVID?

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When the Right Thing to Do is Also the Wrong Thing: The Pandemic as a CSR Paradox

When the Right Thing to Do is Also the Wrong Thing: The Pandemic as a CSR Paradox

Professor Heidi Reed discusses the COVID-19 pandemic as a CSR paradox and explores her new paper, “When the right thing to do […]

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Face Masks and COVID – A Failed Technology

Face Masks and COVID – A Failed Technology

A model is only as good as its underlying simplifying assumptions and data, notes Robert Dingwall, and in the case of testing the effectiveness of face masks to combat the spread of COVID those data are, he argues, at best fragile.

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An Introvert’s Guide to Academic Networking and Hybrid Events

An Introvert’s Guide to Academic Networking and Hybrid Events

As academic conferences and events re-emerge after a period of COVID-19 induced absence, Mark Carrigan, takes stock of the new post-pandemic world of academic meetings and provides four strategies for how academics can productively navigate and build networks in a world of hybrid interactions.

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"Asking the question 'are we doing enough' regularly and repeatedly is critical."
depiction of a coronavirus from CDC
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove
technical lead, World Health Organization, infectious disease epidemiologist
Collage of COVID 19 in public spaces

Coronavirus resources

WHO Coronavirus Information: A fairly comprehensive source for coronavirus related resources: FAQs, travel advice, situation reports, research information.

CDC Coronavirus Information: Another fairly comprehensive source for coronavirus related resources for travelers, business owners and workers, health-care professionals, researchers, schools, and anyone else. This resource also provides information on symptoms, testing, at-risk groups, and the disease at large.

Stop the Spread of Rumors

This CDC page offers highlight facts on the coronavirus. Make sure you know the symptoms and preventative measures you can take to stop the spread of the virus. 

Wearing a Mask: Myths and Facts

The University of Maryland has an article on mask safety and effectiveness.

Federation of American Scientists Coronavirus Project: This new initiative of FAS aims to debunk misinformation circulating the web on matters of public health and safety, as well as provide clear and sourced information for policymakers.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center: A website focused on resources addressing the global public health, infectious disease, and emergency preparedness aspects of coronavirus, and includes the renowned COVID-19 spread dashboard.

Coronavirus – The Big Data Response: The SAGE Ocean initiative gathered a collection of resources related to the analysis of COVID-19 data. These include mapping the spread of the virus, GitHub data repositories, some of the datasets currently being used as well as how people are using R and Python to help understand the virus.

Coronavirus Resources for Researchers

COVID-19 Global Research Registry for Public Health and Social Sciences: This is a worldwide registry for the identification of COVID-19-related research and risk reduction efforts. It has been launched by the National Science Foundation-supported CONVERGE facility and the Social Science Extreme Events Research Network in response to a call from the Working Group for Disaster Research at the National Institutes of Health. Registered projects should be focused on topics related to the social and behavioral consequences, policy responses, educational and economic impacts, and public health implications of COVID-19. The form takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. The form is currently available in English, French, and Spanish and will soon be translated to Mandarin Chinese.

COVID-19 International Social Science Research Tracker: A Github-based aggregator begun by Cornell’s Nathan Matias and Facebook’s Alex Leavitt.  This resource is designed to help track new social research about COVID 19, including published findings, pre-prints, projects underway, and projects that are at least at a solid proposal stage.

National Institute of Health FAQ on Proposals and Research Awards: This Guide Notice intends to address general questions associated with proposal submission and award management that may arise in relation to COVID-19. NIH is providing this information as a service to applicant and recipient communities in the hopes it will address high-level questions that may arise in this regard.

Free Medical, Social and Behavioral Articles from SAGE Publishing on Coronavirus and COVID-19. This collection includes the latest medical research from SAGE related to the virus as well as top social and behavioral research to help individuals, communities, and leaders make the best decisions on dealing with the outbreak and its consequences.

Coronavirus Resources for Educators and Students

Free SAGE Publishing Resources to Help Transition to Online Learning: SAGE (parent of Social Science Space) opened access to many resources to help you set up and manage an online course quickly and successfully, at no charge to you or your students.

For authors and early career researchers who are preparing articles for publication in remote and challenging circumstances, SAGE Publishing has a range of resources on its Journals Author Gateway to support you, including: How To Get Published free online courses, webinars, videos, Guides on how to increase the readership of your published research, information on the SAGE Journals Blog, and Advance: A SAGE preprints community

NAFSA Association of International Educators Coronavirus Critical Resources: NAFSA has assembled resource links to help educators navigate issues arising from the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.

U.S. Department of Education Coronavirus Information: A great source of information about the effort of schools amidst this COVID-19 pandemic. Provides information for schools looking to navigate the current ecosystem.

Resources for Visualizing and Mapping COVID-19 Data

An interactive data dashboard from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University tracks global COVID-19 cases, deaths and recoveries in real time. All the data is stored on GitHub.

Tableau has launched a free resource page featuring data visualizations about the spread of COVID-19 and the public health response.

Our World In Data has aggregated research on COVID-19 helping to make the data understandable and accessible for readers. Graphics illustrate confirmed cases, testing, and containment strategies.

This epidemic calculator contextualizes COVID-19 numbers and forecasts described in the media, and can help predict the impact of intervention.