RAPID: Uncertain Risk and Stressful Future: A National Study of the COVID-2019 Outbreak in the U.S.

2019年12月，科学家发现了一种与武汉肺炎暴发有关的新型冠状病毒(冠状病毒-2019年)中国，并被怀疑起源于人畜共患病。2020年3月11日，世界卫生组织宣布疫情为大流行，2020年3月13日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普宣布全国进入紧急状态。由于个人可以在出现症状(即“隐形威胁”)之前传播疾病，而且在缺乏疫苗保护的情况下，这场危机的严重性和在美国采取遏制措施的时间尚不清楚。在近期这种不确定性和模糊性的背景下，研究团队研究了对新冠肺炎爆发的情感(恐惧、担忧、痛苦)、认知(感知风险)和行为(媒体使用、健康保护行为)的反应，以及这些早期反应如何随着时间的推移影响结果。这些学者研究了媒体对新冠肺炎疫情的广泛报道与对威胁的急性应激反应有何关联，它在为人们提供了解威胁所需信息方面的成功(或失败)，以及认知和情感过程如何影响风险评估、行为反应和心理健康结果。这个项目在研究风险认知、健康保护行为和急性应激对全球健康威胁显现时调整的影响方面是独一无二的。这项研究是对ameriSak小组的5,000人的纵向研究，ameriSak小组是一个基于概率的具有全国代表性的美国家庭样本，在美国新冠肺炎威胁开始之前，已经收集了他们的心理和身体健康数据。在接下来的一年里进行的两项调查检查了受访者对疫情的风险认知、恐惧、媒体使用、健康防护行为和痛苦。样本的抽取使用样本分层，以确保样本在年龄、性别、种族/民族和人口普查地区方面的代表性。对于第一波，抽取的样本被随机分配到三个具有全国代表性的重复(即，队列)中的一个，这些重复具有两个日历周的非重叠数据收集期，总共为6周的现场采集期。因此，每个队列代表一个代表性样本，其访谈可概括为该队列映射到的两周期间的时间点调查估计数。随着危机的展开(或消退)，明年将对第一波样本进行第二次调查。总体而言，这项研究评估了风险认知、媒体使用、急性压力、社会规范、自我和反应效能，以及在具有代表性的大样本上出现模糊和致命的家庭威胁时的保护行为，这些都具有现有的威胁前心理和身体健康数据。这提供了一个独特的机会，在不断展开的公共卫生危机中审查国家应对措施，产生具有理论和实践重要性的研究成果。该团队有五个具体目标：1)评估与新冠肺炎相关的媒体曝光率、新冠肺炎风险认知、对管理(和沟通)新冠肺炎的机构的信任，以及对感知到的新冠肺炎威胁的行为和情感反应；2)调查新冠肺炎相关媒体报道的类型(例如电视、推特、在线新闻)、数量(例如总时长)和内容(例如图像)如何与风险感知以及行为和情感反应(例如急性压力、躯体化、抑郁)相关；3)研究“新冠肺炎”威胁的模糊性以及官方通信中有关这一威胁的不一致之处与感知风险以及情绪和行为反应之间的关系；4)调查先前暴露于个人(例如童年暴力)和集体(例如9/11)压力之下的情况是否与“新冠肺炎”相关的风险认知以及对“新冠肺炎”威胁的行为和情绪反应有关；5)在应对当前和不断演变的威胁的流行病学样本中对比健康行为的关键理论。我们预计，这项研究收集的信息将推动未来应对高压力事件的概念性工作，方法是加深我们对冠状病毒爆发的传统和非传统媒体报道可能影响个人风险认知和急性压力反应的程度的理解，提供信息以便于及早识别潜在公共卫生危机后后续困难的风险个人，并明确将压力和应对文献与风险分析和感知的文献相结合。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In December 2019, scientists identified a novel Coronavirus (COVID-2019) that was associated with an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China and that was suspected of being zoonotic in origin. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic, and on March 13, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency. Because individuals can transmit the illness prior to exhibiting symptoms (i.e., an “invisible threat”), and in the absence of a vaccine for protection, the severity of this crisis and the timing of containment in the United States is unknown. In the context of this uncertainty and ambiguity about the immediate future, the research team studies emotional (fear, worry, distress), cognitive (perceived risk), and behavioral (media use, health protective behaviors) responses to the COVID-19 outbreak and how these early responses shape outcomes over time. The scholars examine how widespread media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak is associated with acute stress responses to the threat, its success (or failure) in affording people the information needed to understand the threat, and how cognitive and affective processes shape risk assessments, behavioral responses, and mental health outcomes. This project is unique in studying the effects of risk perceptions, health protective behaviors, and acute stress on adjustment as an ambiguous global health threat unfolds. The research is a longitudinal study of 5,000 people from the AmeriSpeak panel, a probability-based nationally representative sample of U.S. households on whom “baseline” mental and physical health data have been collected prior to the start of the COVID-19 threat in the U.S. Two surveys administered over the next year examine respondents’ risk perceptions, fear, media use, health protective behaviors, and distress surrounding the outbreak. The sample is drawn using sample stratification to assure sample representativeness with respect to age, gender, race/ethnicity, and Census Region. For Wave 1, the drawn sample is randomly assigned to one of three nationally representative replicates (i.e., cohorts) that have non-overlapping data collection periods of 2 calendar weeks, for a total of a 6-week fielding period. Each cohort thus represents a representative sample whose interviews are generalizable to point-in-time survey estimates for the 2-week period to which the cohort is mapped. A second survey is fielded on the Wave 1 sample within the next year, as the crisis unfolds (or abates). Overall, this study assesses risk perceptions, media use, acute stress, social norms, self- and response-efficacy, and protective behaviors at the start of an ambiguous and deadly domestic threat on a large representative sample with existing pre-threat mental and physical health data. This provides a unique opportunity to examine national responses to an ongoing public health crisis as it unfolds, producing research with both theoretical and practical importance. The team has five specific aims: 1) Estimate COVID-19-related media exposure, COVID-19 risk perceptions, trust in institutions managing (and communicating about) COVID-19, and behavioral and emotional responses to perceived COVID-19 threat; 2) Investigate how type (e.g., television, Twitter, online news), amount (e.g., total hours), and content (e.g., imagery) of COVID-19-related media coverage are associated with risk perceptions, and behavioral and emotional responses (e.g., acute stress, somatization, depression); 3) Examine how ambiguity of the COVID-19 threat and inconsistencies in official communications about this threat are associated with perceived risk, as well as emotional and behavioral responses; 4) Investigate whether prior exposure to individual (e.g., childhood violence) and collective (e.g., 9/11) stress are associated with COVID-19-related risk perceptions and behavioral and emotional responses to the COVID-19 threat; and 5) Contrast key theories of health behavior in an epidemiological sample responding to a current and evolving threat. We expect that information collected in this research will advance future conceptual work on coping with highly stressful events by furthering our understanding of the extent to which traditional and non-traditional media coverage of the Coronavirus outbreak may be affecting individuals’ risk perceptions and acute stress responses to it, providing information to facilitate early identification of individuals at risk for subsequent difficulties following potential public health crises, and explicitly integrating the stress and coping literature with the literature on risk analysis and perception.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.