Collaborative Research: RAPID: Socioeconomic Determinants of Social Distancing Behaviors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

对COVID-19大流行的行为或“社会距离”反应将在很大程度上决定病毒在美国人口中的传播速度。为了鼓励保持社会距离，许多州关闭了学校和非必要的企业，并颁布了“呆在家里”的命令，限制人们去杂货店购物和就医等必要活动。虽然居家令通常被认为是强制性的，但大多数州依赖于自愿遵守，而不是通过传票或逮捕来惩罚违规行为。在整个危机期间，人们一直关注的一个问题是，个人在多大程度上选择有效地保持社交距离，以减缓疫情的蔓延。然而，迄今为止，几乎没有系统的信息出现在社会群体之间按收入、种族/民族和居民区划分的社会距离差异，以及至关重要的是，为什么存在这些差异。该项目将从俄亥俄州哥伦布市的青年及其照顾者样本中收集COVID-19大流行期间保持社会距离做法的详细数据，包括一周内非家庭旅行的时间和地点，以解决这一差距。这项研究将以一个正在进行的项目为基础，重点关注正常（非大流行）条件下日常活动模式的差异。提高社交距离的有效性有可能挽救数百万人的生命，减轻大流行期间不可避免的医疗保健系统负担，并减轻因疫情防控不力而对美国和全球经济造成的潜在长期损害。该项目的研究结果将为决策者提供至关重要的指导，他们必须有针对性地采取干预措施，以最有效地遏制病毒爆发，并在大流行期间满足最脆弱人群的需求。研究结果还将为流行病学家提供重要信息，他们必须根据有关人群中社会距离实践的现实假设来模拟疾病传播。最后，临床医生也将受益于更精确的个人感染风险信息。COVID-19促使人们提出了保持社交距离的要求，但我们对谁遵守了要求，谁没有遵守要求知之甚少。该项目将重新联系246个家庭（N=309名青年），这些家庭参加了正在进行的美国国立卫生研究院资助的研究，该研究是在2019冠状病毒病大流行爆发之前在现场进行的日常空间暴露研究（背景下的青少年健康与发展研究）。该研究的目标1将调查收入、种族/民族和居民区经济劣势与典型（大流行前）暴露于高感染风险地点（这些地点的社会互动密度捕获了这些地点）之间的关系。这些数据将揭示在广泛采取社交距离行为之前大流行早期阶段的感染风险。该研究将利用基于一种新颖的基于调查的方法收集地理参考活动数据的基础研究中关于地理位置和日常访问地点相关特征的独特数据。该研究的目标2将在大流行高峰期重新管理这种位置数据收集方法，以衡量照顾者和青少年在社会距离行为程度上的收入、种族/民族和社区差异。目标3将处理接触大流行病和保持社会距离行为对经济困难、心理健康、家庭冲突和青年行为问题的后果。该项目将结合广泛、高质量的社会调查数据，生成关于大流行病期间青年及其照顾者流动情况的首个地理参考数据。研究结果将为有关顺从行为的社会和地理决定因素的社会学理论提供信息，这些理论补充了更符合个性和个体决定因素的心理学研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

The behavioral or “social distancing” response to the COVID-19 pandemic will largely determine the rate at which the virus spreads throughout the U.S. population. To encourage social distancing, many states have closed schools and nonessential businesses and instituted “Stay-at-Home” orders that limit trips to necessary activities such as grocery shopping and medical care. While Stay-at-Home orders are typically considered mandatory, most states rely on voluntary compliance rather than penalize infractions through citations or arrests. A persistent concern throughout the crisis has been the extent to which individuals are choosing to practice social distancing effectively in order to slow the growth of the pandemic. Yet, to date, virtually no systematic information has emerged on differences in social distancing across social groups by income, race/ethnicity, and residential neighborhood and, critically, why these differences exist. This project will address this gap by collecting detailed data on social distancing practices during the COVID-19 pandemic – including the timing and location of non-home trips over the course of a week – from a sample of youth and their caregivers in the Columbus, OH area. The study will build on an ongoing project focused on differences in patterns of everyday activity under normal (non-pandemic) conditions). Enhanced effectiveness of social distancing holds the potential to save millions of lives, reduce the burden to inevitably taxed health care systems during pandemics, and mitigate potential longer-term damage to the US and global economies due to ineffective pandemic containment. Findings from the project will provide crucial guidance to policy-makers who must target interventions to most effectively contain viral outbreaks and address the needs of the most vulnerable populations during pandemics. Findings will also provide important information for epidemiologists who must model disease spread based on realistic assumptions regarding social distancing practices across the population. Finally, clinicians will also benefit from more precise information on infection risk profiles at the individual level. COVID-19 has prompted requirements for social-distancing, and yet we know little about who complies and who does not. This project will re-contact 246 households (N=309 youth) who participated in an ongoing NIH-funded study of everyday spatial exposures that was in the field in the period prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study). Objective 1 of the study will investigate the association between income, race/ethnicity, and residential neighborhood economic disadvantage and typical (pre-pandemic) exposure to higher infection risk locations as captured by the density of social interaction at those places. These data will shed light on infection risk during the early stages of the pandemic before social distancing behaviors were widely adopted. The study will leverage unique data from the baseline study on the geographic location and associated characteristics of everyday places visited based on a novel survey-based method for the collection of geographically-referenced activity data. Objective 2 of the study will re-administer this location data collection approach during the peak period of the pandemic to measure income, race/ethnicity and neighborhood variation in the extent of social distancing behaviors for both caregivers and youth. Objective 3 will address the consequences of pandemic exposure and social distancing behaviors for economic hardship, mental health, family conflict, and youth behavioral problems. The project will generate the first geographically referenced data on the mobility of youth and their caregivers during pandemics in combination with extensive, high quality social survey data. Findings will inform sociological theories regarding the social and geographic determinants of compliance behavior, which complement psychological investigations more attuned to personality and individual determinants of the same.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.