RAPID: The Diffusion of Fear and Coronavirus: Tracking Individual Response Across Time and Space

由于新冠肺炎，世界正面临一场大流行。经济和社会的混乱才刚刚开始，许多人担心这种疾病以及对经济和社会制度的影响。随着未来几周发现更多病例，居民的日常生活将继续受到干扰，进而影响他们的社会和心理健康。这个项目将调查在危机中恐惧和相关的心理和身体健康行为在美国各地的扩散情况。该项目考察了人口、身心健康、社会连通性和媒体消费特征如何驱动个人感知的风险和客观的恐惧表达，包括极端的社交距离、恐慌性购买和囤积。此外，该项目还分析了社区脆弱性、社会经济劣势以及地理上与检测到和披露的冠状病毒病例的接近程度如何同时影响个人的恐惧反应行为。总的来说，该项目促进了有关个人个人和集体如何应对危机的知识，并使政府领导人和公民受益，使他们能够更好地准备资源，以应对未来的极端事件。收集幸福感指标并评估其影响可提供有价值的信息，帮助组织、政府和政策制定者更好地了解新冠肺炎等流行病灾害对个人、社会和系统的影响。该项目不仅将阐明疫情受害者目前是如何应对的，还将提供有关社会机构如何满足这些幸存者的需求的信息，从而展示美国社会关系/资源的广度和丰富以及他们的主要缺陷。该项目分析了新冠肺炎大流行造成的恐惧与社会和社区特征的关系。它将利用对大约10,000名个人的在线调查，对美国人口进行随机、有代表性的后分层加权抽样。这项15-20分钟的自我管理访谈使用了有效的调查工具，捕捉了主观和客观恐惧、心理和身体健康、媒体消费以及与恐惧反应相关的沟通行为的多个维度。此外，该项目使用多个地理位置标记，将个人的反应与现有的聚合数据库配对，包括捕获新冠肺炎确诊病例的位置、特定社区层面的疾病易感性和宏观层面的社会经济劣势的数据库，从而能够使用成熟的标准线性建模，以及嵌套在各自地理社区中的个体受访者的分层建模技术。该项目是快速融资的绝佳人选，因为随着报告的案例越来越多，恐惧和焦虑加剧；因此，至关重要的是，在受访者最担心的时候采访他们，以反映在这些时期普遍存在的日益增长的社会焦虑。这项研究将为评估恐惧反应和总体幸福感的动态变化提供一个基线。它还将解决社会科学中的关键问题，即恐惧和焦虑如何在动态的社会环境中和周围在时间和空间上移动，从而为涉及社会资本和恐惧文化变化的社会学理论提供信息。该项目由社会学、既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)和安全可信的网络空间共同资助。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。

The world is facing a pandemic owing to COVID-19. The economic and social disruption is just beginning, and many are fearful of the illness as well as effects on economic and social systems. Residents will continue to experience disruptions in their daily lives as more cases are detected in the coming weeks, in turn affecting their social and psychological wellbeing. This project will investigate the diffusion of fear and related mental and physical health behaviors across the United States amidst the crisis. This project examines how individuals’ perceived risk and objective expressions of fear, including extreme social distancing, panic purchasing, and hoarding, are driven by demographic, physical and mental health, social connectivity, and media consumption characteristics. In addition, the project analyzes how community vulnerabilities, socioeconomic disadvantages, and geographic proximity to detected and disclosed coronavirus cases impact individual fear response behaviors simultaneously. Broadly, this project advances knowledge regarding how individuals respond to crises, personally and collectively, and benefits governmental leaders as well as citizens so they can better prepare resources to respond to future extreme events. Gathering indicators of well-being, along with assessing their impact provides valuable information to help organizations, governments, and policymakers better understand the personal, social and systemic ramifications of epidemiological disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only will the project illuminate how the victims of the pandemic are currently coping, but it also will provide information as to how social institutions are addressing the needs of these survivors – thus, demonstrating the breadth and wealth of America’s social ties/resources, as well as their major deficiencies.This project analyzes fear generated by the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of social and community characteristics. It will develop a random, representative post-stratified, weighted sample of the United States population using an on-line survey of approximately 10,000 individuals. The 15-20 minute self-administered interview utilizes validated survey instruments capturing multiple dimensions of subjective and objective fear, mental and physical health, media consumption, and communication behaviors related to fear responses. In addition, using multiple geo-location markers, the project pairs individuals’ responses with existing aggregate databases, including those capturing the locations of confirmed COVID-19 cases, specific community-level disease vulnerability, and macro-level socioeconomic disadvantages to enable the use of well-established standard linear modeling, as well as hierarchical modeling techniques nesting individual respondents in their respective geographic communities. The project is an excellent candidate for RAPID funding because fear and anxiety become heightened as more cases are reported; thus, it is critical to interview respondents at the height of their concerns to reflect the growing social anxiety that is so widespread during these times. The study will provide a baseline for evaluating dynamic changes in fear responses and general well-being. It will also address key questions in social science regarding how fear and anxiety moves in and around dynamic social environments both temporally and spatially, thus informing sociological theories involving changes in social capital and the culture of fear.This project is jointly funded by Sociology, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace.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.