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

对新冠肺炎疫情的行为或“社交疏远”反应将在很大程度上决定病毒在美国人口中的传播速度。为了鼓励社会疏远，许多州关闭了学校和非必要的企业，并制定了“呆在家里”的命令，限制旅行参加必要的活动，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，但大多数州依赖于自愿遵守，而不是通过传讯或逮捕来惩罚违规行为。在整个危机期间，一个持续令人关切的问题是，为了减缓流行病的蔓延，个人在多大程度上选择有效地实行社会距离。然而，到目前为止，几乎没有出现系统的信息，说明按收入、种族/民族和居住社区划分的社会群体之间的社会距离差异，以及关键的是，为什么会存在这些差异。该项目将通过从俄亥俄州哥伦布地区的青年及其照顾者样本中收集有关新冠肺炎大流行期间社会疏远做法的详细数据-包括一周内不回家旅行的时间和地点-来弥补这一差距。这项研究将建立在一个正在进行的项目的基础上，该项目侧重于正常(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拯救数百万人的生命，减轻疫情期间不可避免地负担沉重的医疗保健系统的负担，并减轻因疫情遏制不力而对美国和全球经济造成的潜在长期损害。该项目的结果将为决策者提供至关重要的指导，他们必须以干预措施为目标，最有效地遏制病毒暴发，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，他们必须根据关于整个人群的社会距离做法的现实假设，对疾病传播进行建模。最后，临床医生还将受益于有关个人感染风险概况的更准确信息。新冠肺炎催生了社交距离的要求，但我们对谁遵守了，谁不遵守，知之甚少。该项目将重新联系246个家庭(N=309名青年)，这些家庭参与了一项由美国国立卫生研究院资助的关于新冠肺炎大流行爆发前一段时间现场日常空间暴露的研究(青少年健康与发展背景研究)。这项研究的目标1将调查收入、种族/民族、居民区经济劣势和典型(大流行前)感染风险较高地点的暴露之间的关系，这些地点的社交密度反映了这些地点的社会互动密度。这些数据将揭示在社会疏远行为被广泛采用之前大流行早期阶段的感染风险。这项研究将利用基线研究中的独特数据，这些数据是根据一种新的以调查为基础的方法收集地理参照的活动数据而进行的，这些数据是关于日常访问地点的地理位置和相关特征的。这项研究的目标2将在疫情高峰期重新实施这一地点数据收集方法，以衡量照顾者和青年的收入、种族/族裔和社区差异的社会疏远行为程度。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后果。该项目将结合广泛、高质量的社会调查数据，生成第一个关于流行病期间青年及其照顾者流动性的地理参考数据。调查结果将提供有关合规行为的社会和地理决定因素的社会学理论，这些理论补充了更符合个性和个人决定因素的心理调查。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.