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

Project Overview

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 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.