Assessing the Social Consequences of COVID-19

University of Maryland researchers Long Doan (Principal Investigator), Jessica Fish (Co-Principal Investigator), and Liana Sayer (Co-Principal Investigator) were awarded an NSF RAPID grant to examine the impacts of COVID-19 and states' and local governments' social distancing directives on behavior, time spent with others, use of technology, and mental and physical wellbeing.

The objective of the project, Assessing the Social Consequences of COVID-19, is to investigate these daily life impacts in real time and to analyze how these impacts are affected by sociodemographic characteristics that affect time use and well-being. Data are leveraged from several hundred respondents' daily time use before the pandemic along with data collected during and after the pandemic to create a natural experiment that isolates the effects of the pandemic on changes in behavior. Among the products of this research are evidence-based recommendations to address the social consequences of the pandemic.

This project collects data for the second and third waves of a three-wave panel study, the second wave during the pandemic with shelter-at-home and lockdown orders in place and the third wave after the pandemic has subsided and orders have been relaxed. Data for these two waves consist of survey responses and 24-hour time diaries collected from 2,000 respondents from online crowdsourcing platforms. This sample includes a smaller sample from whom data were collected before the pandemic. Data are collected on sociodemographics, typical sleep, work, and exercise patterns, and arrangements for housework and carework to investigate effects on time use and wellbeing.