Study Information for Participants

Below we address some questions you might have about participating in this study. If you have further questions after consulting this FAQ, please email utcovid19study@austin.utexas.edu.

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Who can participate?

Anyone 18 years or older can participate as long as 1) you own an iPhone or Android smartphone, and 2) you have periodic access to a good wifi connection.

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What will the study involve?

There will be two main components:

1) At the beginning of the study you will complete some questionnaires to give us a better sense of your current state of mind and living situation and how it’s changed since COVID-19 started influencing daily life. There will also be a wrap-up questionnaire at the end.

2) You will download a specially created, secure research app to your smartphone. This app will collect data from some of the sensors on your smartphone to provide information about your patterns of activity, mobility, and social behaviors. It will also send you a set of brief questions 2-3 times per day, asking about your sleep, COVID-19 symptoms (if any), moods, levels of stress, etc.; the surveys take 1-2 minutes to complete. You can learn more about the full set of sensors and questions asked here.

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Why should I participate?

First, you will be helping scientists gather vital information about the behavioral and psychological responses to this pandemic and others that might come. These findings will rapidly be published so that scientists and policy makers can devise interventions and strategies to aid our social, psychological, and economic recovery and our future crisis preparation.

Second, we believe it will be interesting and informative for you. This exercise was originally developed as one of the writing assignments for an introductory psychology course at the University of Texas at Austin in the 2018-19 school year (but without the coronavirus part, obviously). So, it was designed with educational objectives in mind. Specifically, you will receive weekly feedback charting the trajectories of your moods, stress, activity, mobility, and socialization patterns. In the past, students have found this information to be exceptionally informative and, in many cases, surprising. Our students found it particularly interesting (and in some cases alarming!) to see objective indicators of their own behaviors (e.g., how often they checked their phones). You can see some sample graphs from previous years here. Third, University of Texas students who seek to fulfill their research requirement will be able to get experimental credit (see below).

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I am an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin. Can I get experimental requirement credit?

Yes, those University of Texas at Austin students who still need to fulfill their research requirement will be able to get 3 hours of experimental credit through the Department of Psychology’s SONA system. On SONA, enroll in the study called “Behavioral & Psychological Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A SmartPhone Sensing Study.” You will be awarded all 3 credit hours after you have downloaded the smartphone sensing app and kept it on your phone for three full weeks. For questions about research credit and navigating SONA, please see this FAQ or email psyresearch@austin.utexas.edu. You can still participate in the study even if you do not want or need research credit.

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Can I drop out of the study once it has started?

Yes, you can drop out at any time without consequence.

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How is this study better than others?

There are many studies about COVID-19 underway at the moment but virtually all of them rely on people retrospectively reporting on their behaviors. Ours is different in two important ways: 1) Our app allows us to capture actual behaviors, not just reports of behaviors that are so susceptible to biases (e.g. memory lapses, misreporting). 2) Our automated sampling of behavior permits data collection at a level of granularity and richness not possible in other studies.

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Will my data be safe?

Yes, we have a great deal of experience collecting data like this and keeping it secure. Since 2013, our research team has been conducting smartphone-based sensing studies that have enrolled thousands of participants. We use sophisticated data encryption, and the data are securely stored on university-owned servers at the University of Texas at Austin. Furthermore, the data are not associated with your name or student EID. All analyses and publications are done on aggregated data only. The data we collect will only be used for research purposes and will only be accessible to members of the research team. We will not share or sell any data to third parties. The study has been approved by the University of Texas Institutional Review Board (IRB #2018-07-0035).

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What information will be collected by the research app?

Mobile data will be collected from each participant’s smartphone device using Beiwe2, a secure open-source mobile phone application. If you have further questions about the app, please email utcovid19study@austin.utexas.edu.

The data will be pushed to a highly secure and encrypted UT server. Mobile data will include a variety of metrics from built-in sensors and system logs that are available on all recent Android and iPhone models and include the following:

  • A. Inertial sensor data (e.g., accelerometer, gyroscope): measures gravitational acceleration and can be used to infer levels of physical activity.
  • B. Location data: provides latitude, longitude, altitude of the users’ current location with an accuracy of 250 feet, with minimal battery impact. This data will be sampled at varying rates, but up to every 5 to 30 minutes.
  • C. Device usage data: measures how often users access and use their mobile device and its various features (e.g., Bluetooth, Phone Logs [not content], Text Logs [not content], WiFi, Power state).
  • D. Experience Sampling Method (ESM): uses brief survey questions about participant’s mood, stress and environmental context. Queries will be made 2-3 times per day via the app and will each require 1-2 minutes to complete.
    • i. Surveys will consist of a brief series of Likert scale questions (e.g., ranging from 0 not at all to 4 very much), radio button questions (e.g., select all the response options that apply), or open-ended questions (e.g., How are you feeling?).
    • ii. Audio. Each night, participants will be prompted to record a short audio clip describing what they are thinking and how they are feeling.
    • iii. Photo. Once a week, ESM prompts will ask the participant to take screenshots of their phone’s app usage.

NOTE: No personal identifiers (including any account or identifying information; e.g., social media accounts, usernames, passwords, etc.) will be collected by the application and no data from other applications will be accessed. Moreover, no additional personal information beyond the scope of the data modalities described above will be collected intentionally or incidentally as part of this study, including personal calendars, e-mail, contacts, social media, pictures, etc.

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Examples of feedback

Below are some examples of the kind feedback you’ll get over the course of the study.

  • Happiness Levels (across weeks):

  • Stress Levels (by time of day):

The information shown on this page are class averages.

  • Virtual and IRL Interaction Patterns (for duration of the study):

  • Interaction Partners (for duration of the study):

  • Frequency of Unlocking Phone (across weeks):

  • Screen time in Seconds (across weeks):

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How long will the study last?

That’s a hard question to answer. Initially, we are aiming for a three week study. However, we may try to extend it depending on how the pandemic develops. We would really appreciate you taking part in it for as long as you can. You will continue to get feedback for as long as you remain in the study.

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If I know others who would like to be involved, can they join the study too?

Yes. Simply share this webiste on social media, email it to a friend, or ask them to email us at utcovid19study@austin.utexas.edu.

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How do I enroll in the study?

Please follow this link to start the first step of the study. If you are a University of Texas at Austin student who seeking research credit for your participation, please find the study and enroll in it on SONA.

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