READ-COGvid: a database from reading and media habits during COVID-19 confinement in spain and italy

Abstract

[EN] The COVID-19 outbreak severely hit the population of Europe in general, and Spain and Italy in particular. By 25th May 2020, both countries accounted for 17.3% of the COVID-19 related deaths and 8.5% of infections worldwide (EU, 2020). The severity of the situation at the beginning of March led their respective governments to pass highly restrictive laws that enforced strict confinement of the vast majority of the population. Within this context, we studied the way adults in Spain and Italy adapted their reading and media habits. Several large studies on reading habits during adulthood have identified five main reading activities and goals: reading for leisure, reading study or work documents, reading news to keep up with current events, reading to socialize with others, and shared reading with children (see Scales and Rhee, 2001; Mol et al., 2008; Torppa et al., 2020). The study of reading habits in adulthood has brought extensive attention due to its relationship with psychological, emotional, and health conditions (see Marshall, 2020, for a review). Indeed, reading for leisure has a clear impact on adults' socio-cognitive well-being (Mumper and Gerrig, 2017). However, little is known about how those habits change and are affected by collective crisis in which the citizens are confined in their homes. One exception is the study of news reading habits during crisis. Extensive exposure to news related to community crisis (e.g., the 9/11 terrorist attacks) led to increased anxiety and non-adaptive health-protective and help-seeking behaviors (see Garfin et al., 2020, for a review). To the best our knowledge, no prior study has evaluated the changes in reading habits due to a collective crisis. A strict lockdown may impact people's free time available, which will set the ground for potential changes in reading habits. But such changes may depend on people's social (e.g., living alone or with minors) or individual characteristics (e.g., distress, reading motivations). In the present paper, we present the READ-COGvid database, composed of responses of 4,800 individuals from Spain and Italy. While we focus on leisure and reading habits at different moments (before the confinement, shortly after confinement, and after 1 month confined), we also collected many other indices (socio-demographic, psychological, and reading-related) that may be of interest to researchers interested in adults' reading and related areas (e.g., communication research, cognitive sciences, social studies, health sciences, cross-cultural studies). The READ-COGvid database is freely available to all users at: https://osf.io/24et3/?view_only=68613c73dd71499bbdadbad93d4ca79a.