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Surveys can be a critical tool in monitoring public health during emergencies. Existing surveillance systems may provide timely reporting of cases and deaths associated with diseases. However, during COVID-19 they did not provide accurate information on the number of cases with virus-related symptoms, testing and treatment seeking. In fact, the surge of potentially infected individuals seeking diagnosis, testing and treatment represented a serious but largely unmeasured dimension of the crisis. This study aimed to evaluate the potential value of monitoring health, attitudinal, and behavioral dimensions that are not included in current U.S. disease surveillance systems during population health emergencies. Additionally, it seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of designing and implementing a low-cost, rapid-turnaround health and behavioral monitoring system when comparable data from existing surveillance systems are unavailable. From March through November 2020, we conducted national surveys with approximately 1,000 interviews each month with Census-balanced samples from a large national commercial panel. These surveys employed replicate national samples drawn from all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. A total of 9,200 interviews, averaging about 20 min in length, were completed over the course of the nine months of fielding. Nearly a quarter of respondents (22%) reported they had been sick for three days or longer since January with what might be COVID. Respondents were questioned about their symptoms, whether they had seen a doctor, had a confirmatory test for the COVID virus, and test results. Approximately one in ten respondents were currently experiencing COVID-like symptoms each month (95% CI: 10.7–12.0%). These numbers dwarf the 0.3% in April and 3.6% in November who had ever had a COVID positive test result. Moreover, 42% of these symptomatic adults sought medical care or testing, increasing strains on the health care system,. Although surveys may not be needed to estimate diagnosed cases, hospitalizations, or deaths, they can provide the missing data on symptomatic cases in the population, the proportion seeking medical care, ability to obtain a confirmatory test, and reasons for not seeking care or testing. This study demonstrates the ability of surveys to provide such information in a timely fashion, which could be replicated in other countries.

Across all social science disciplines, but in particular public administration, there is a shared concern about the costs of using traditional random samples to generate data, and its impact on researchers' ability to engage in \"quality\" research. As a result of these costs, more academics, practitioners, and students are turning to nonprobability sampling methods. However, beyond the notion that these sampling strategies reduce the external validity of findings, individuals engaging in these strategies are doing so in ill-conceived ways due to the lack of attention and examples within mainstream public administration literature that provide researchers with the knowledge on how to best utilize these strategies. As a result, this article seeks to provide public administration practitioners, Master of Public Administration students, and scholars an understanding of and guidance in deciding to utilize three nonprobabilistic methods, convenience sampling, purposive sampling, and sample matching. This article is intended to be used as a supplement to materials and texts already currently being used within methods courses.

It is important to quickly identify parent beliefs, intentions, and behaviors toward childhood vaccination, especially parents of children 19 to 35 months. This paper describes parental immunization beliefs, intentions, and behaviors; assesses the relationships between beliefs and intentions regarding child immunization and actual behaviors; and assesses whether beliefs, intentions, and/or behaviors varied across demographic subgroups. A sample of parents, ages 18 and older, from a mobile panel with people residing in the U.S. were invited to answer immunization behavior, intention, and belief questions using a smartphone app that was not vaccine specific. 10,000 panel members with a child under 18 were sent invitations. 1029 surveys were completed by a respondent with a child 19 to 35 months. The survey instrument replicated many NIS questions and had similar sequencing. Respondents reported that most children received all recommended vaccines, except flu vaccine, suggesting some may not understand the immunization schedule. Demographics closely associated with immunization behaviors were respondents’ education and household income. There is strong agreement that vaccines are effective, important to community health, and the child’s health. There is concern about the number of shots received, disease prevention, and ingredient safety. Some belief remains about vaccines causing learning disabilities. Positive beliefs about the benefits of childhood vaccines and concomitant risks vary with demographics. This survey provided insights into beliefs and behaviors of parents regarding childhood vaccination. It found evidence of differences in beliefs, particularly related to delaying or declining recommended childhood vaccinations. The survey was conducted in a few days and at lower cost than traditional methods. This serves as a model for health agencies where rapid results or inexpensive approaches are needed.

Published surveys in the United States provide much evidence that COVID-19 vaccination is influenced by disease and vaccine-related risk perceptions. However, there has been little examination of whether individual’s general beliefs about vaccines are also related to COVID-19 vaccination, especially among unvaccinated adults. This study used an August 2021 national survey of 1000 U.S. adults to examine whether general beliefs about vaccines were associated with COVID-19 vaccination status. In addition, it used multivariate analyses to assess the relative contribution of individual vaccine beliefs to current vaccine status independently of COVID-19-specific attitudes and experiences, and demographics. The findings indicated that, collectively, general vaccine beliefs mattered more than demographics, COVID-19-specific risk perceptions, confidence in government, or trust in public health agencies in COVID-19 vaccination status. Overall, the findings affirm the importance of vaccine education and communication efforts that help people understand why vaccines are needed, how vaccine safety is established and monitored, and how vaccines provide protection from infectious diseases. To achieve success among vaccine-hesitant individuals, communication strategies should target vaccine beliefs that most influence vaccination outcomes.

Despite relatively high rates of population spread, morbidity and mortality, the adoption of COVID-19 vaccines among the eligible populations was relatively slow. Some of the reasons for vaccination hesitancy and refusals have been attributed to unique aspects of this pandemic, including attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. However, little attention has been paid to the role of underlying vaccine beliefs in the likelihood of early vaccine adoption for COVID-19. This study provides a more comprehensive assessment of factors influencing willingness to get an early vaccination, and the relative contribution of general vaccine attitudes, compared to demographics, perceived threat and institutional trust. Monthly national surveys were conducted between June and November 2020 using a national consumer panel of U.S. adults (n = 6185). By late November, only 24% of respondents said they were very likely to get a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved COVID-19 vaccine as soon as it became available. While COVID-19 risk perceptions, confidence and trust in key institutions and information sources, and some demographic variables, were predictive of early vaccination intent, general beliefs regarding vaccines played a significant role, even compared to demographics, perceived risk and institutional trust. This lesson from the COVID-19 experience could help inform public health communications in future epidemics.

We propose a new, model-based methodology to address two major problems in survey sampling: The first problem is known as mode effects, under which responses of sampled units possibly depend on the mode of response, whether by internet, telephone, personal interview, etc. The second problem is of proxy surveys, whereby sampled units respond not only about themselves but also for other sampled. For example, in many familiar household surveys, one member of the household provides information for all other members, possibly with measurement errors. Ignoring the existence of mode effects and/or possible measurement errors in proxy surveys could result in possible bias in point estimators and subsequent inference. Our approach accounts also for nonignorable nonresponse. We illustrate the proposed methodology by use of simulation experiments and real sample data, with known true population values.

Introduction The decreasing level of physical activity among female undergraduates is worrying as it is associated with the increased risk of non-communicable diseases. Thus, this study aimed to identify the motivations, barriers and preferences towards exercise among female undergraduates in Malaysia. Methods A non-probability purposive sampling was used for the recruitment process. The inclusion criteria of the participants were registered female undergraduates and aged between 18–30 years old. A semi-structured in-depth interview was used to collect topic-related information from the participants and signed consents were obtained prior to the interview. The interview questions were on respondents’ understanding of exercise, motivation and barriers to exercise, and exercise preferences. The recruitment process was conducted until the data was saturated. All interviews were audio recorded and manually transcribed verbatim. NVivo 11 was used to conduct the inductive analysis of the data to develop themes for motivation and barriers to exercise. For exercise preferences, four predetermined themes were used. Findings A total of 26 respondents participated in this study. Eight themes were found for motivation to exercise, with the most common themes being maintaining or improving appearance, health benefits and togetherness. For barriers of exercising, five themes were found, and the most common ones were disliking exercise and no motivation. For exercise preferences, most respondents preferred a structured exercise program with flexibility in terms of when and where the exercise could be conducted. Light or moderate intensity exercise for 10–30 minutes with a frequency of 1–2 times a week was desired the most among the respondents. Conclusion In conclusion, personal and environmental factors play important roles in motivating or hampering female undergraduates to exercise, and a structured program was the preferred mode of exercise of these respondents. A new exercise module was designed based on this needs assessment with a 70% acceptance rate among the participants. These findings can help the future development of more exercise modules tailored to female university students.