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“社交距离”反应将在很大程度上决定该病毒在美国人口中传播的速度。为了鼓励保持社交距离，许多州关闭了学校和非必要企业，并制定了“呆在家里”的命令，限制人们进行必要的活动，例如杂货店购物和医疗保健。虽然“居家令”通常被认为是强制性的，但大多数州依靠自愿遵守，而不是通过传票或逮捕来惩罚违规行为。整个危机期间一直令人担忧的是，人们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，几乎没有出现关于不同社会群体因收入、种族/族裔和居住社区而导致的社交距离差异的系统信息，以及更重要的是，为什么存在这些差异。该项目将通过从俄亥俄州哥伦布地区的青少年及其照顾者样本中收集有关 COVID-19 大流行期间社交距离做法的详细数据（包括一周内不回家旅行的时间和地点）来解决这一差距。该研究将建立在一个正在进行的项目的基础上，该项目的重点是正常（非大流行）条件下日常活动模式的差异。提高社会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沉重负担的医疗保健系统的负担，并减轻因大流行遏制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政策制定者提供重要指导，政策制定者必须采取针对性干预措施，以最有效地遏制病毒爆发并满足大流行期间最脆弱人群的需求。研究结果还将为流行病学家提供重要信息，流行病学家必须根据有关人群中社交距离做法的现实假设来模拟疾病传播。最后，临床医生还将受益于更准确的个人感染风险概况信息。 COVID-19 促使人们要求保持社交距离，但我们对谁遵守、谁不遵守知之甚少。该项目将重新联系 246 个家庭（N = 309 名青少年），他们参与了 NIH 资助的一项正在进行的日常空间暴露研究，该研究在 COVID-19 大流行爆发之前进行（青少年健康与发展背景研究）。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）接触较高感染风险地点（通过这些地点的社交互动密度捕获）之间的关联。这些数据将揭示大流行早期阶段在社会疏远行为被广泛采用之前的感染风险。该研究将利用基线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，基于一种新颖的基于调查的方法来收集地理参考活动数据。该研究的目标 2 将在大流行高峰期重新采用这种位置数据收集方法，以衡量护理人员和青少年的社交距离行为程度的收入、种族/民族和邻里差异。目标 3 将解决大流行暴露和社会疏远行为对经济困难、心理健康、家庭冲突和青少年行为问题的影响。该项目将结合广泛、高质量的社会调查数据，生成关于大流行期间青年及其照顾者流动性的第一个地理参考数据。研究结果将为有关合规行为的社会和地理决定因素的社会学理论提供信息，这些理论补充了更适合个性和个人决定因素的心理学调查。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.