RAPID: SEAN COVID-19 Survey Archive

In this project, U.S. and international surveys on COVID-19 are compiled, these materials are made publicly available, and weekly summaries of key research findings are disseminated. U.S. social science research critically informs government and scientific responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Accurate measurement of the public?s attitudes and behaviors in the crisis, including its impact on physical and emotional health, economic well-being, and daily activities, is essential in decision making, implementation and assessment. This project addresses key challenges in advancing this basic knowledge by assembling available survey data from myriad sources; assessing which data are of the necessary quality for use; making these data and associated research materials available to decisionmakers, researchers, and the American public in a highly functional single-source location; summarizing and communicating key findings on an ongoing basis to ensure that important survey findings on COVID-19 are available to the widest possible audience; and doing this all in a highly accelerated time frame. This resource supports decisionmakers concerning public health and social and economic conditions; assists researchers in their efforts to investigate, analyze and replicate existing studies; and serves the public good by providing open access to COVID-19 social, behavioral, and economic research.

This project uses publicly and professionally available sources to compile U.S. and international surveys on COVID-19 and deploys rapid methodological assessments to identify probability-based studies among them. Producers or sponsors of such surveys are asked to share their topline data reports, scripted questionnaires, datasets, banner books of crosstabulated data, analytical reports and any related analyses and documentation. All available materials are posted to the open-access Societal Action Experts Network (SEAN) COVID-19 website, making use of the PARC knowledge management platform for survey research. Users can full-text search to retrieve individual survey questions and results, individual scripted questions, and all associated materials. Weekly summaries of key research findings released in the previous week are produced, linking back to data sources. These summaries are disseminated to a 1,000+-member email distribution list, the listservs of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the World Association for Public Opinion Research, SEAN stakeholders, and visitors to the SEAN archive site who sign up for weekly notifications.

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.