Responding to turbulent times: Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath in a probability-based US national sample

In December 2019, scientists identified a novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) that was associated with an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China and that was suspected of being zoonotic in origin. Within 3 months, this outbreak was labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization, and a national emergency was declared in the United States. Over the next year, over 500,000 Americans lost their lives to the disease and millions more became ill. In addition, U.S. residents simultaneously coped with a variety of other cascading collective traumas (an economic recession, race-driven social unrest, weather-related disasters, and a contentious presidential election). In the context of this turbulence, variants of COVID-19 have spread worldwide. Nonetheless, there has been unexpectedly good news regarding the development of safe and effective vaccines for COVID-19, and their rollout across the U.S. has accelerated over time. Understanding how Americans respond to the pandemic and government actions to address the pandemic (e.g., vaccine rollout) is critical information that can guide policymakers as they develop national policies to mitigate its impact on public health and welfare.

In 2020, in collaboration with NORC at the University of Chicago, the research team studied over 6,500 individuals from the AmeriSpeak panel, a nationally representative probability-based sample of adults across the United States, as they responded to and coped with both personally- and collectively-experienced traumas. Initial data were collected in March and April 2020, at the start of the pandemic in the U.S., and a second wave of data was collected in September and October 2020. The scholars will conduct a third survey of these respondents as vaccinations continue, the pandemic waxes and wanes across the world, and Americans return to a post-pandemic reality. The team will continue to study emotional (fear, worry, distress), cognitive (perceived risk, time perception), and behavioral (health protective behaviors) responses to the pandemic and its associated stressors and examine how early responses to the pandemic and evolving psychological processes have shaped outcomes over time. The research also examines how widespread media coverage of COVID-19 and direct exposures to pandemic-related stressors (e.g., job loss, death of a loved one) are associated with psycho-social responses to the pandemic, and how cognitive and affective processes shape risk assessments, behavioral responses, and mental health outcomes over time. Finally, psycho-social responses are also mapped against neighborhood, county, and state-level parameters (e.g., behavioral restrictions, unemployment rate, COVID-deaths). Limited research has taken a social ecological approach to infectious disease response or examined how community-level factors may affect perceptions of risk of future hazards - especially ones with such uncertain and deadly outcomes. This project examines predictors of variability in response to the COVID-19 crisis, as well as advances future conceptual work on coping with highly stressful national threats. The findings can help policymakers, service providers, members of the media, and educators design risk communication materials and intervention efforts that are evidence-based, cost-effective, and sensitive to the needs of the populace.

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.