Mutual Aid and Wellbeing Interview Transcripts

Transcripts for interviews with individuals who participated in ACORN's Coronavirus Community Support initiative.

Interviews were conducted between the 10th of May and the 6th of June, over a month after UK government lockdown regulations first came into effect, and during which time several easements to lockdown were introduced (Dunn et al., 2020). Interviews ranged from 30 minutes to an hour, with the mean average length being 40 minutes.

Interviews followed a semi-structured format, guided by an interview schedule consisting of open questions supplemented with prompts, and closed questions. A pilot interview was conducted to check the clarity and focus of the items, and minor refinements were made. The schedule was structured according to the following themes: 1. Participants’ mental health and wellbeing before participation in mutual aid, including any impact Covid-19 had had on their wellbeing (e.g. “Before you participated in ACORN’s community support, how were you feeling in terms of your mental health?”); 2. The nature of the mutual aid activities they undertook (e.g. “What sorts of activities have you personally been involved in as part of ACORN’s community support activities?”); 3. How participants felt immediately during those activities, and over a longer period of time (e.g., “Generally, since participating in community support have you noticed any impact, either positive or negative, to your general mood day-to-day?”); 4. Any further changes in beliefs or behaviour resulting from participation (e.g., “Has participating in community support led to any change in your beliefs about how society should be organised after Coronavirus?”).

11 interviews were conducted as part of the study; however, only 8 of the interviewees provided consent for an anonymised transcript of their interview to be made available on a data-sharing site so that other researchers have access. Therefore only the interview transcripts of those 8 individuals are provided here.