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

2019年12月，科学家发现了一种新型冠状病毒（COVID-2019），该病毒与中国武汉的肺炎疫情有关，并被怀疑是人畜共患病。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。因为个体可以在表现出症状之前传播疾病（即，一种“看不见的威胁”），而且在没有疫苗提供保护的情况下，这场危机的严重程度和美国遏制的时间都是未知数。在这种对近期未来的不确定性和模糊性的背景下，研究团队研究了对COVID-19爆发的情绪（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）反应，以及这些早期反应如何随着时间的推移塑造结果。学者们研究了媒体对COVID-19爆发的广泛报道与对威胁的急性应激反应之间的关系，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。该项目在研究风险认知、健康保护行为和急性压力对调整的影响方面是独一无二的，因为一个模糊的全球健康威胁正在显现。这项研究是对来自AmeriSpeak小组的5,000人进行的纵向研究，AmeriSpeak小组是一个基于概率的美国家庭全国代表性样本，在美国COVID-19威胁开始之前收集了“基线”心理和身体健康数据。和对疫情的担忧使用样本分层抽取样本，以确保样本在年龄、性别、种族/民族和人口普查区域方面的代表性。对于第一波，抽取的样本被随机分配到三个全国代表性重复样本中的一个（即，队列），其具有2个日历周的非重叠数据收集期，总共6周的部署期。因此，每个队列代表一个代表性样本，其访谈可推广到队列映射的2周期间的时间点调查估计。第二次调查是在明年对第一波样本进行的，因为危机正在展开（或减弱）。总体而言，本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，并在一个模糊的和致命的国内威胁的大样本与现有的威胁前的心理和身体健康数据的开始保护行为。这提供了一个独特的机会，审查国家对正在发生的公共卫生危机的反应，因为它展开，产生具有理论和实践重要性的研究。该团队有五个具体目标：1）估计与COVID-19相关的媒体曝光，COVID-19风险认知，对COVID-19管理（和沟通）机构的信任，以及对感知的COVID-19威胁的行为和情绪反应; 2）调查如何类型（例如，电视、Twitter、在线新闻），数量（例如，总小时数），和内容（例如，图像）与风险认知以及行为和情绪反应（例如，急性应激、躯体化、抑郁）; 3）检查COVID-19威胁的模糊性和官方通信中关于这种威胁的不一致性如何与感知的风险以及情绪和行为反应相关; 4）调查先前是否暴露于个人（例如，儿童暴力）和集体（例如，9/11）压力与COVID-19相关的风险认知以及对COVID-19威胁的行为和情绪反应有关;以及5）在流行病学样本中对比健康行为的关键理论，以应对当前和不断变化的威胁。我们希望，通过进一步了解传统和非传统媒体对冠状病毒爆发的报道可能影响个人风险感知和急性应激反应的程度，本研究中收集的信息将推动未来应对高度压力事件的概念性工作，提供信息，以促进在潜在的公共卫生危机之后及早发现有可能出现后续困难的个人，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.