STORRS – Researchers at the University of Connecticut and Brown University announce the launch of the Pandemic Journaling Project, which lets anyone with a smartphone create a weekly journal of their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, while also contributing to the construction of a historical archive. 

Each week, participants take a brief survey, then share their experiences through text, voice or images. They can volunteer to share their entries immediately on the project’s public-facing website, or choose to limit access to themselves and the research team for the next 25 years. Twenty-five years after the pandemic ends, all project data will be released as a publicly available historical archive.

Participation is anonymous and open to anyone 18 or older. After an initial demographic questionnaire, participants will be asked two questions to prompt their journal entries. For the duration of the pandemic, participants will receive a weekly email or text message with a link to a new set of questions. Participation, which does not require a computer, takes as little as 15 minutes a week.

Weekly survey questions and journaling prompts will invite participants to consider the impact of the pandemic on different aspects of everyday life, such as work and finances, living circumstances, mental health, and encounters with discrimination and racism, as well as experiences of social connection, community, and the arts.

Survey responses and journal entries will be collected in a digital data repository where researchers can begin studying them right away. For the first 25 years, access to the data will be limited to the primary research team and designated collaborators. After 25 years, the archive will become a public record.

The project’s lead investigators are Sarah S. Willen, UConn associate professor of anthropology and Katherine A. Mason, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University.

The Pandemic Journaling Project is a joint initiative of the University of Connecticut and Brown University. It was launched with generous seed funding from multiple UConn units, including Global Affairs, the Human Rights Institute, the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), as well as the Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College and the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. For more information, visit ;andemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu.