You are here

Home / Our research / Research themes / Response

The CORSAIR study

In 2012, our joint team from King’s College London (Louise Smith, Nicola Fear, James Rubin), University College London (Henry Potts, Susan Michie) and Public Health England (now the UK Health Security Agency; Richard Amlôt) were awarded a grant by the National Institute of Health Research to develop a set questions that could be used in the event of a future pandemic. This tool would help academics and policy makers understand how the public were responding in terms of their behaviours and the influences on those behaviours, and what impact official communications and policies were having. The NIHR funding allowed us to conduct preparatory work to develop these questions and then to ‘hibernate’ the study until a pandemic occurred. The plan was that, if and when a pandemic broke out, we would come out of hibernation and assist the English Department of Health and Social Care in launching, modifying and analysing their surveys.

Our papers about the preparatory work are available here:

In February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread to the UK. The DHSC had begun a series of surveys to explore public responses in late January. Our project was activated by NIHR shortly after these surveys began and we started work analysing their data and making recommendations to DHSC, SAGE and others. We have published accounts of our experiences here: 

Data used in reports that we have shared with DHSC, NHS England, SAGE and other groups have in many cases also appeared in peer-reviewed papers. The lists below give links to our reports, pre-prints and final peer reviewed papers. We will continue to update this list with outputs as they appear.

Data reports

Final report

Pre-prints

Peer-reviewed papers