Research

The primary tasks carried out as part of our project were conducted in two ways. Firstly, there was qualitative research, in which we carried out:

Nearly 100 Focus Group Interviews (FGI) with parents, students over 13 years of age and teachers from all levels of schools in Poland. In this research, we verified our hypotheses about the pandemic and young people's behaviour, and together with the research participants we tried to answer the questions that bothered us the most.

Multiple in-depth individual interviews (IDI) with parents, teachers, school principals and school psychologists, during which we explored individuals' perspectives on the reality surrounding the respondents.

Creation and analysis of "Principal's Diaries" - a retrospective record of the experiences, experiences and subjective view of principals of educational institutions in the different stages of pandemic and distance learning.

Analysis of background documents - national official guidelines and school recommendations at the lowest level. This look allowed us to recreate the process of translating national recommendations and curatorial guidelines into concrete recommendations for the directors of individual institutions. Thanks to this study, it was possible to recreate the situation of school principals who had to react on an ongoing basis to the changing situation and reconcile the interests and expectations of all actors of the school duty, the Ministry of Education and Science, the superintendencies, the founding bodies, pupils, parents, teachers and other school employees.

The above research was mainly carried out in the spring of 2021 more than a year after the start of the pandemic in Poland, when as a society we experienced two very intense waves of illnesses and when the vaccination process began.

The second pillar of our research was quantitative research, in which we carried out:

• a survey for parents (n=5174)
• a survey for students (n=6125)
• Survey for teachers (n=2182)

The qualitative surveys were carried out from May to June 2021. This was the period of mass vaccination and decreasing risk of disease, and at the same time the end of the school year, and therefore the time of high school exams, eighth grade exams, and final grades in the remaining grades. The questionnaires were conducted on a nationwide random sample of schools and distributed through the principals of individual schools. Respondents completed the surveys electronically from any location of their choice.

From these surveys we obtained a quantitative picture of social and psychological phenomena occurring during the pandemic, we obtained correlations and relationships between individual variables and the impact of individual factors on the general well-being of children and adolescents.

And in addition to this, we carried out a survey of the social and psychological phenomena occurring during the pandemic.

In addition, we conducted a number of studies in special schools in Warsaw as a separate population.