UC research team takes part in international study about intentions, feelings and behaviours related to COVID-19

A research team from the University of Coimbra (UC) is participating in an international project that aims to study intentions, feelings and behaviours related to COVID-19. The focus of this research is to evaluate the policies and measures adopted in the face of the current global pandemic, trying to understand if the strategies to be developed are universal or if they depend on the cultural context.

"Taking into account populations from different countries spread over five continents is particularly relevant due to cultural differences. Pandemics such as COVID-19, as well as natural disasters caused by climate change, show that these phenomena do not have a fixed location. Only by carrying out studies on a global scale will it be possible to understand whether the measures to be implemented can be shared or whether there is a cultural and contextual dependency that must be taken into account," say the researchers involved in the project, Ana Ferreira, Daniela Sousa and Inês Almeida.

The project consists of three different studies and is an international partnership involving more than 100 laboratories and departments of universities and institutes in several countries, with translation into about 50 different languages.

In Portugal, the University of Coimbra - CIBIT-ICNAS Research Centre and the Faculty of Medicine (FMUC), the University of Porto and the ISCTE-IUL (University Institute of Lisbon) are participating in the study.

According to Ana Ferreira, Daniela Sousa and Inês Almeida, "this collaboration benefits from the use of collaborative tools that allow the sharing and use of information from open access repositories and platforms, reinforcing the importance of an open science paradigm".

The study is open to anyone over the age of 18: https://voluntarios.cibit.uc.pt/psacovid/.

^{Translation by Diana Taborda}