This study is a literature review of empirical studies on the social impact of COVID-19 on Nordic residents. The research search was conducted between April 11 and September 22, 2022. In total 45 studies were used for the study.
Literature review
The literature review is based on a search of Web of Science, a global citation database which gives access to multiple electronic databases. The initial search was conducted between April 11 and April 19, 2022. Articles had to fulfil the following inclusion criteria: (1) focus on the current COVID-19 pandemic, (2) report on experiences of loneliness and/or social isolation as an outcome of the pandemic, and (3) study participants should come from the Nordic countries. This could involve participants from other countries, too. Taken as a whole, the studies cover the entire population except children, refugees, and immigrants, who are included in other NWC projects. We searched the database using the keywords ‘COVID-19’ (or coronavirus, or corona pandemic, or SARS-CoV-2) and ‘social isolation’ or ‘loneliness’. The search was then refined by the Nordic countries.
This initial search resulted in a total of 436 records. Those that did not meet our inclusion criteria were excluded after screening the abstract, and the remaining full-text articles (n=77) were then screened for eligibility. Literature reviews, commentaries, and studies that did not measure loneliness or social isolation were removed (n=22). We also excluded articles (n=21) that treated loneliness or social isolation as predictors of other indicators of well-being or which combined loneliness or social isolation with such indicators.
On July 22, we checked the
WHO Global research database for any additional papers but there were no other publications relevant for this report. On September 21, 2022, the draft report and selection of studies was discussed in the project’s reference group of Nordic researchers studying loneliness and social isolation. As a result, two reports with information on older Swedish people were added. We did a final search of Web of Science with the same keywords on September 22 to include relevant studies published after our initial search and found 11 more studies. In total, 45 studies provided information for answering the research questions (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Flowchart of the selection of literature for the report
