DOI: 10.3886/e131022
title: COVID-19 Coping Study

description: The COVID-19 Coping Study is a national, longitudinal cohort study of 6,938 US adults aged ≥55 enrolled from April 2nd through May 31st, 2020 in all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Participants were recruited through a non-probability multi-frame sampling strategy, and completed data collection through online questionnaires administered via the University of Michigan Qualtrics in English (N=6,886) and Spanish (N=52). Data were collected on a variety of demographic, social, and health-related topics including COVID-19 symptom and testing history, COVID-19-related stressors and worries, self-isolation and social distancing practices, behavior changes and coping mechanisms, mental health symptom scales, and living arrangements. A sub-set of the baseline sample (N=4,401) were sent monthly follow-up questionnaires over the following 12 months. The included files contain baseline through 12-month of follow-up data from the COVID-19 Coping Study. Data are available in Stata (C19CS.dta), a CSV file with value labels (C19CS Labelled.csv), and a CSV file with numeric values (C19CS Numeric.csv). Open-ended questionnaire responses are not included in the data files, and the text for the open-ended questions is struck out in the PDF documentation of the monthly questionnaires.
description: The attrition weights used in this study were constructed as the inverse probability of study retention. We constructed a separate set of weights for the 4-month, 5-month, 6-month, 7-month, 8-month, 9-month, 10-month, 11-month, and 12-month follow-ups, using different definitions of dropout in each weight calculation. The final inverse probability weights (IPWs) are designed to up-weight individuals similar those who dropped out after baseline, and down-weight individuals similar to those who participated in any survey through the follow-up survey of interest (either the 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-, or 12-month). Please see a detailed description of the weight calculations in the file C19CS Weight Construction.pdf
description: Response Rates: A total of 4,453 participants were recruited in the snowball sampling frame from 2 April to 31 May 2020 with 4,401 questionnaires completed in English and 52 in Spanish. A total of 2,485 were recruited in the panel sampling frame from 17 April to 15 May 2020, for a total of 6,938 participants. Monthly follow-up questionnaires were sent to snowball sampling frame participants who completed English baseline questionnaires (N=4,401). A detailed description of response rates can be found in the recruitment flow diagram.
description: Presence of Common Scales: <b>Life Satisfaction </b>was measured with a 10-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied)<br><br><b>Self-rated health</b> was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (poor) to 4 (Excellent)<br><br><b>Self-rated memory</b> was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (poor) to 4 (Excellent)<br><b><br>Loneliness</b> was measured using the three-item University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (Hughes et. al., 2004).<br><br><b>Depression </b>was measured using the eight-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale (Steffick, 2000).<br><br><b>Anxiety</b> was measured using the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Smith et. al., 2017).<br><br><b>Worry about COVID-19 pandemic</b> was measured with a<b> </b>5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (Not at all) to 4 (Extremely).<br><b></b><br><b>Participant's level of agreement that they received assistance from their community during social distancing measures or shelter in place orders</b> was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree).<br><br><b>Participant's level of agreement that the federal government cares about older adults</b><b> in America </b>was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree).<br><br><b>Participant's level of agreement that their state government cares about older adults in their state</b><b> </b>was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree).<br><br><b>Participant's level of agreement that respect for older adults has decreased during COVID-19</b><b> </b>was measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree).<br><br><b>Industry working in or worked in before retirement </b>was coded from open-ended descriptions according to the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<br><br><b></b><b>6-item Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS</b><b>) Cognitive Function Scale:</b> Captures negative sentiments about cognition applied to scenarios of daily life in the past 7 days. The PROMIS Cognitive Function raw scores were converted to T-scores using the HealthMeasures Scoring Service. The T-score is a standardized score calibrated to the US general population with a mean of 50 and standard deviation of 10. The six individual Cognitive Function items correspond to variables promis7 – promis12; the PROMIS Cognitive Function T-score corresponds to variable TscoreFun. (HealthMeasures, 2019; Terwee et al., 2021)<br><br><b>6-item Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS</b><b>) Cognitive Abilities Scale:</b> Captures positive sentiments about cognition applied to scenarios of daily life in the past 7 days. The PROMIS Cognitive Abilities raw scores were converted to T-scores using the HealthMeasures Scoring Service. The T-score is a standardized score calibrated to the US general population with a mean of 50 and standard deviation of 10. The six individual Cognitive Abilities items correspond to variables promis1 – promis6; the PROMIS Cognitive Abilities T-score corresponds to variable TscoreAbl. (HealthMeasures, 2019; Terwee et al., 2021)<br><br><b>5-item FRAIL scale (Fatigue, Resistance, Ambulation, Illnesses, and Loss of Weight): </b>The 5-item FRAIL scale was used to measure frailty among respondents with a composite score ranging from 0 to 5, where scores of 0 were considered robust, scores of 1-2 were considered pre-frail, and scores of 3-5 were considered frail. The composite frailty score was constructed based on the domains of fatigue, resistance, ambulation, illness, and loss of weight. For fatigue, participants were asked “How much of the time during the past month did you feel tired?” and were assigned 1 point for responses “all of the time” or “most of the time” and 0 points for responses “some of the time”, “a little of the time”, or “none of the time”. For resistance, participants were asked “By yourself and not using aids, do you have any difficulty walking up 10 steps without resting?” and were assigned 1 point for “yes” and 0 points for “no”. For Ambulation participants were asked “By yourself and not using aids, do you have any difficulty walking several hundred yards?” and were assigned 1 point for “yes” and 0 points for “no”. For illness, participants were asked “did a doctor ever tell you that you have angina, arthritis asthma, cancer (other than minor skin cancer), chronic lung disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, heart attack, hypertension, kidney disease, or stroke?”; 1 point was assigned to participants who reported 5 or more of the listed conditions, otherwise 0 points were assigned. For loss of weight, participants were asked “Have you unintentionally lost weight in the last 6 months?” and assigned 1 point for “yes” and 0 points for “no”. (Morley et al., 2012)<br>
description: The COVID-19 Coping Study consists of two sampling frames. The first sampling frame was the ‘snowball sample’, which was recruited through social media, advertisements, organizational mailing lists, the NIH ResearchMatch database, the University of Michigan Health Research database and word-of-mouth snowball sampling in English and Spanish.<br><br>The second sampling frame was the ‘panel sample’, which was recruited from an online research panel maintained by the professional survey company Dynata. Sampling quotas were implemented for age, gender, race, ethnicity and education that matched the general US population aged ≥55 years based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wideranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research. Panel sample participants received a nominal amount of approximately US$1. <br>
description: 6,938 US adults aged ≥55.
description: web-based survey;