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Minnesota Social Contact Study
The 2020 Minnesota Social Contact Study is a survey that is being conducted to understand how Minnesotans are interacting with each other. Your household may be contacted by phone or mail.
If your household is contacted, please take the time to participate and help complete this important project!
What is the Minnesota Social Contact Study?
We ask participants to tell us about social contacts for a one-day period: the day before. Minnesotans randomly selected for the study are contacted by phone or mail.
The State of Minnesota is responsible for informing the public and policy makers about infectious disease, including the coronavirus, also called COVID-19. Understanding how people interact with each other helps us understand how diseases spread, and how actions like closing schools and restaurants might change that. It also helps us understand how this experience is different for people throughout Minnesota compared with people in other areas of the country or the world. Due to their jobs, some Minnesotans cannot stay home, while others are working from home, and some are not working at all. Surveys like this one provide information to improve the models that can show what might happen during a disease outbreak. Modeling is a way to use what we know about a disease now to help us understand what could happen in the future and how our actions may affect that. The only way to learn this information about how Minnesotans are interacting is to talk to people like you about your experiences.
The survey is conducted in partnership by the Minnesota Department of Health, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC).
How many people participate in the survey?
The survey will contact about 5,600 households in Minnesota. A diverse group of people, all ages over 18, and all backgrounds will be interviewed. We hope to reach various segments of the community to reflect a balanced picture of all Minnesota residents. We hope that every household we contact will participate in the survey.
What kind of data is the study collecting?
The survey is collecting data about one day in the lives of participants. A daily diary asks participants how many people they had contact with the day before at home, work, and during leisure time; the age and gender of those people; and how much time they spent with them throughout the day. For households with children, we will ask the same questions about one child in the household and one adult in the household.
How will data from the Social Contact Study be used?
Data from the survey will help the State of Minnesota increase the accuracy of current and future infectious disease models. The current models do not use data about social contacts during a disease outbreak in Minnesota because the data does not yet exist.
Can anybody participate in the study?
For confidentiality purposes and to maintain the integrity of the study, we are contacting only people randomly selected to participate in the 2019 Minnesota Health Access Survey who were willing to be contacted again. We are allowed to speak only to people 18 years of age and older. If you know someone who would like to help the Minnesota Department of Health with tracking the spread of the coronavirus, also called COVID-19, they can go to the website covidnearyou.org.
Still have questions? Go to health.mnha@state.mn.us or call 651-201-3550