CORONAVIRUS | How do people’s behaviours shape the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic? A group of researchers are hoping that Malaysians would join a global effort to help find the answer.

They also seek to understand how the pandemic and its economic impact has affected people’s mental wellbeing and how they cope with the stress.

They aim to recruit at least 10,000 participants worldwide to take a 20-minute survey - including at least 1,000 from Malaysia - in hopes of yielding insights that would help policymakers around the world decide how best to tackle the pandemic.

“When we have data, we can give advice to the government.

“We can give advice on what needs to be done, what should be done, and what we cannot do that may harm people.

“So, it is very important for us to get the data and help our future. The more people contributing to this study, the more we can make a difference.

“So, hopefully, everyone can play their role during this difficult time,” said International Islamic University Malaysia assistant professor of psychology Jamilah Hanum Abdul Khaiyom, who is a collaborator in the study.

Another collaborator, Yale-NUS College assistant professor of psychology Keng Shian-Ling, said one example is to understand how strongly people in different countries adhere to social distancing practices.

“So, it will be really helpful for us to get a sense of the extent to which this particular behaviour explains the spread of the virus in the presence of all other factors,” she told Malaysiakini in an interview yesterday.

Dubbed the Psychology Corona Study (or PsyCorona), the project is being led by Pontus Leander at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and Jocelyn Belanger at NYU Abu Dhabi, but researchers in each country operate independently.

Keng and Jamilah told Malaysiakini that they have signed up as collaborators less than two weeks ago, and have started recruiting participants in Malaysia earlier this week.

The study currently involves over 100 researchers in 70 countries. It has already crossed its goal of recruiting more than 10,000 participants.

Keng said only about 50 of them are based in Malaysia, but the team hopes to recruit many more.

The survey is available in more than 20 languages including English and Chinese. A Bahasa Malaysia version was added on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of data-points

This first part of the study is a 20-minute survey that would take a snapshot of people’s attitudes, behaviour, and wellbeing.

At the end of the survey, participants would be asked whether they wish to be contacted later with follow-up questions.

If they consent, they will be sent short questionnaires from time-to-time to track any changes. This could continue over a period of months, depending on how the pandemic develops.

In the meantime, data scientists would be roped in to crunch the data collected, which would be anonymous.

“That's where we try to link self-report data to see how well it can predict the spread (of the disease) across different countries.

“But for that phase to work, we literally need tens of thousands of data points,” Keng explained.

She said it is important to recruit a large number of participants in Malaysia because this would help ensure that their sample is representative of the Malaysian population and that their analysis is reliable.

In particular, she said the team hopes to recruit more people who speak Bahasa Malaysia as their first language since that is the language spoken by most Malaysians.

Meanwhile, Jamilah said one positive aspect of the pandemic is that many Malaysians have stepped up with many initiatives to help one another, and hopes they would be as generous in contributing to the study.

“I believe Malaysians too would like to contribute something in order to find out what are the factors - social, psychological, and cultural factors - that contribute to the spread of this outbreak,” she said.

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