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Description:

This project, “Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Forest Resource Use by Rural Communities in India” aims to study the role of forest plantations as a safety net for rural households facing distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was collected in 2021-22.


The data includes:

- Village information on demographics and resource governance
- Household information on demographics, livelihoods, impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and forest use and management
- Information on forest plantations, including species and management 



Data structure:

This dataset contains 720 households nested within 24 local governmental units (panchayats) in the Kangra District of India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh. 

This data builds a panel dataset with previously collected data in 2018, “Impacts of Afforestation on Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in India”, which is publicly available here: https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/220402 . 

The data from 2018 included 2400 households nested within 60 panchayats (40 households per panchayat). The current dataset has selected 24 panchayats from the previous study, and randomly selected 30 households from the original sample in each panchayat to resurvey in 2021-22. 

The panel dataset thus enables comparison of forest use patterns before the pandemic (2018) with forest use during/after pandemic disruptions (2021-22) for 720 households. 

At present, we post the raw, unprocessed data. We have removed all person names to protect identity of surveyed households. The documentation files include full information about variables collected. 



Archived files include: 

A_full_survey_20211004_final.pdf
This file includes all of the survey instruments at the village, household, and plantation level. 



C-form: This is panchayat-level data (e.g. the local governmental unit, or village)

C-Form.pdf
This file includes the panchayat-level form (c-form) extracted from Qualtrics survey software.

c_form_codebook.csv
This includes the codebook for columns in the c-form data

c_form.csv
This is the c-form data. 
Row 1 includes question numbers from qualtrics; Row 2 includes the questions (see C-Form.pdf)
26 villages are included (since several plantations used by households in our 24 sample panchayats are located in neighboring panchayats)
145 columns


H-form: This is household-level data

H-Form.pdf
This file includes the household-level form (h-form) extracted from Qualtrics survey software.

h_form_codebook.csv
This includes the codebook for columns in the h-form data

h_form.csv
This is the h-form data. 
Row 1 includes question numbers from qualtrics; Row 2 includes the questions (see H-Form.pdf)
720 households are included (nested in 24 panchayats)
795 columns


P-form: this is (forest) plantation level data

P-Form.pdf
This file includes the household-level form (p-form) extracted from Qualtrics survey software.

p_form_codebook.csv
This includes the codebook for columns in the p-form data

p_form.csv
This is the p-form data. 
Row 1 includes question numbers from qualtrics; Row 2 includes the questions (see p-Form.pdf)
153 plantations are included
168 columns