A SCOPING REVIEW OF SOCIOCULTURAL ISSUES CONCERNING INSTITUTIONAL QUARANTINE AND ISOLATION DURING MAJOR PANDEMICS AND NEAR PANDEMICS IN AFRICA (2000 – 2022): IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH, PRACTICE AND POLICY

OBJECTIVES This scoping review seeks to summarize/identify the existing evidence and gaps concerning the sociocultural issues concerning institutional quarantine and isolation during the major pandemics and near pandemics in Africa which occurred between the years 2000 and 2022. METHODS Research Design This study will adopt a scoping review design, and it will be conducted using the Arksey and O'Malley’s (2005) guidelines for conducting scoping reviews [1]. Research Question The research question this scoping review seeks to answer is “What empirical evidence and gaps exist on the sociocultural issues concerning institutional quarantine and isolation during viral pandemics (and near pandemics) in Africa?” Identification of Literature An online systematic search of nine research databases (SCOPUS, PubMed, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), CINAHL Ultimate, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, Dentistry and Oral Sciences Source, SPORTDiscus with Full Text, and Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection) will be conducted to identify and retrieve literatures published between 2000 and 2022 using a combination of relevant search terms, Boolean operators (“AND” and “OR”), and truncations (“*” or “#”) (Tables S1 to S3; Supplementary file). Selection of Literature All the retrieved literature will be imported into Rayyan web application for deduplication of all duplicate records [2]. The deduplicated literatures will be subjected to a two-stage screening process by two independent reviewers who were guided by a set of specific eligibility criteria. The first stage of screening will involve title and abstract screening of the deduplicated literature to identify those literature that are relevant at prima facie. The non-relevant literature will be identified at the first-stage screening will be excluded while the remaining ones will be subjected to a second-stage screening. In the second stage screening, a full text evaluation of the residual literature will be done. Following the full text evaluation, only those literature that meet the inclusion criteria will be included in the review. Also, during the two-stage screening process, all conflicts will be resolved through thorough discussion between the two reviewers. Also, the reference lists of the included literature will be manually searched to identify additional literature for inclusion into the review. In this scoping review, only those literatures that meet the following criteria will be included: • Peer-reviewed journal articles • Articles published in English • Articles reporting empirical findings on the sociocultural issues concerning institutional quarantine and isolation during viral pandemics in Africa • Articles published between the year 2000 and 2022 • Articles with accessible full texts However, those literature meeting the following criteria will be excluded: • Gray literature (e.g., books, book chapters, magazines, etc.) • Peer-reviewed literature that were not original research journal articles (e.g., systematic reviews, letters, opinions, comments, editorials, etc.) • Literatures that were published in other languages asides from English • Literatures that reported empirical findings on the sociocultural issues concerning institutional quarantine and isolation during non-viral pandemics (and near pandemics) in Africa • Literatures that did not report empirical findings on the sociocultural issues concerning institutional quarantine and isolation during viral pandemics (and near pandemics) in Africa • Literatures published before the year 2000 and after the year 2022 Data Charting, Collation, and Summarisation From the literature that will be included, data will be extracted using a bespoke data extraction sheet. The data extracted include names of authors, year of publication, authors’ names, country/location of the study, sample size, study population/sample characteristics, study design, study instruments, findings, and conclusions. The extracted data will be collated, summarized, and presented in texts and tables.