The impact of changing personal relationship dynamics on quality of life throughout the UK COVID-19 lockdowns – a mixed methods study
Abstract
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in multiple UK-wide lockdowns, which prevented individuals from meeting friends and family outside their confined households. Prior work suggests this sudden change in social relationship dynamics had a negative impact on mental and well-being outcomes throughout the pandemic. The present study aimed to characterise the influence of changing personal relationship dynamics upon change in life satisfaction within the context of the UK lockdowns.
Method
A longitudinal survey of two waves was distributed to UK individuals following the first and third UK lockdowns. Changes in personal relationships were operationalised as binary variables, and a life satisfaction index was created using the difference in life satisfaction between waves. Multiple linear regression was used to investigate the association between relationship deterioration, change, or improvement and life satisfaction index, controlling for gender and age. A thematic analysis was conducted on written responses to identify factors that may have impacted change in quality of life throughout the pandemic.
Results
Life satisfaction significantly decreased after the initial 2020 lockdown. Within individual survey waves, we observed significant associations between personal relationship dynamics and life satisfaction. No significant association was observed between relationship dynamics within confinement and life satisfaction index. Qualitative analysis identified ten themes that might have also affected life satisfaction change.
Conclusion
Improving personal relationships likely only had a minor impact on positive adaptation and overall quality of life during the pandemic. Future studies would benefit from a greater sample size, to allow the study of specific relationships’ impact on quality of life.
© 2025 Ryan J. Shepherd, Elisa Bellotti, Emilie Vrain, published by International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA)
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