Making Sense of and Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Analysis of SOLPAN Interviews with Individuals Living Alone

This study investigates how individuals living in single-person households made sense of and coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. While the original “Solidarity in Times of a Pandemic” (SolPan) project conducted repeated qualitative interviews with a heterogeneous sample, this analysis will be focusing on a purposively selected subsample of participants, concentrating on Swiss individuals living in single-person households. Depending on available resources, the analysis may be expanded to include Swiss participants living in shared apartments for comparative purposes. To promote systematicity, Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress and coping will be used as an analytical lens to help guide the coding process.The analysis will focus on appraisal processes, emotion-focused and meaning-focused coping. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of coping and sense-making processes in individuals living alone during a period of prolonged stress, and to provide insights applicable beyond the pandemic context.