STEM and research careers
Impact of Covid-19 on researchers and the UK research base
26/05/2020
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) commissioned CRAC/Vitae, supported by UKRI and Universities UK, to gather evidence to understand the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on the activities of researchers and research groups. We ran an online survey to record a snapshot of experiences of researchers in terms of how the pandemic and mitigating strategies, such as social distancing, were impacting on their work, and obtained over 12000 responses. BEIS undertook the work to assess the current and expected impact of Covid-19 on research activity and the research community to inform its consideration and design of potential interventions that Government and others could make to help protect UK researchers, research institutions and facilities, and in the longer term reinforce the research base and sustain R&D activity in the UK.
30/06/2021
A second wave of the survey on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on research and researchers was run almost a year after the initial survey funded by UKRI. This targeted 3300 respondents from the initial survey who gave permission to be recontacted. The survey explored how workloads had changed, the ongoing effect of the Covid-19 restrictions and the impact on the mental health and wellbeing of researchers.
10/02/2023
A third wave of the survey on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on researchers and research has been commissioned by BEIS. This wave will gather evidence on the effectiveness of the interventions that were introduced by BEIS and UKRI to reduce the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the longitudinal implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.
