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WELCOME TO THE UNDERSTANDING AMERICA STUDY CORONAVIRUS IN AMERICA ("COVID") SURVEY

The Understanding America Study's Understanding Coronavirus in America (“Covid”) survey tracked attitudes and behaviors around the Novel Coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The project was launched with a stand-alone survey on March 10, 2021 (wave 1). The tracking survey (waves 2-29) included a national long-form questionnaire and a Los Angeles County short-form questionnaire and ran from April 1, 2020 through July 2021 . Tracking survey waves 2-24 were administered bi-weekly (national) and weekly (LA County) from April 1 2020 through February 16 2021. Survey waves 25-29 were administered monthly (national) and bi-weekly (LA County) from February 17-July 20, 2021. Subsequent waves were conducted as stand-alone surveys.

The tabs below provide access to reports, questionnaires, toplines, single data files, longitudinal data files, and documentation that were provided after the end of each wave of the UAS COVID survey. To see a virtual exploration of the different documents and data from the Understanding America Study's Understanding Coronavirus in America check out our webinar (slides available here). To interactively explore the Understanding Coronavirus in America data through graphics updated daily, visit our tracking survey site at https://covid19pulse.usc.edu. For more information or questions contact us at uas-l@maillist.usc.edu.



Available datasets include files for each completed wave of the Covid surveys, as well as longitudinal files that combine all Covid survey waves into easy-to-use datasets, updated with a consistent variable naming structure to simplify data comparisons between the different waves, and sample weights. In addition, several derived variables are included in the files, as well as indicators for wave number, UAS survey number, and survey type (long-form versus short-form). The two longitudinal files are:

  1. National Sample longitudinal file: includes all waves of the long-form national surveys. The first wave was fielded in March 2020. Waves 2 - 29 were fielded every two weeks from April 2020 through February 2021 and every four weeks from late February 2021 through July 2021. The stand-alone Waves 30 - 33 were fielded in September - October 2021, February - March 2022, July - September 2022, November 2022 – January 2023, and May 2023 – July 2023 respectively.
  2. Los Angeles County Sample longitudinal file: includes all long-form surveys (Waves 1 - 34) from those respondents who were LA County residents, along with all short-form surveys (which were administered during Waves 2 - 29 to LA County residents only). LA County respondents were surveyed once every seven days during Waves 2 - 24 and biweekly during Waves 25 - 29.

These datasets may be linked to other UAS survey data files downloadable from our survey page, using a unique UAS ID code (uasid). CESR does not release personal identifiers associated with these data to researchers, who may apply for "not human subjects" determinations from their local IRB for their analysis.

These data can also be easily linked to external data sources at the state level using the included state of residence variable. If you are interested in county-level or zipcode-level linkages to external data sources, please review the information provided on the External data sources tab.

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An overall description of the UAS Covid-19 surveys can be found in the UAS COVID-19 Panel Description. Questionnaires, codebooks, toplines and other documentation are available without need for registration via the Documentation tab. A comparison of the UAS Covid-19 data with several other Covid-19 survey data sources is available in the UAS Covid-19 Comparison With Other Data Sources.

Acknowledgement to include in presentations and publications based on UAS covid data sets
Please use this version of the acknowledgement included in your data use agreement, to which we have added our main funders.
The project described in this paper relies on data from survey(s) administered by the Understanding America Study, which is maintained by the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) at the University of Southern California. The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of USC or UAS. The collection of the UAS COVID-19 tracking data is supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and by grant U01AG054580 from the National Institute on Aging, and many others.


This page provides an overview of available codebooks, questionnaires, toplines and other documentation. An overall description of the UAS Covid-19 surveys can be found in the UAS COVID-19 Panel Description. A description of the UAS Covid-19 Longitudinal Files is provided in the UAS Covid-19 Longitudinal Files Data Description. A comparison of the UAS Covid-19 data with several other Covid-19 survey data sources is available in the UAS Covid-19 Comparison With Other Data Sources.


We have created and are making available a variable "crosswalk" to identify how the variable names in the longitudinal files correspond to the variable names in the individual Covid wave files. We also provide a data description document that contains information about how the longitudinal files (and weights) are created, details on the derived variables, differences between the content of the long and short-form surveys, and how to link the longitudinal files to other UAS data sets. You can download the UAS Covid-19 Survey Longitudinal Files Crosswalk here, the UAS Covid-19 Longitudinal Files Data Description here, and the UAS COVID-19 Weighting Procedures here.

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To see a virtual exploration of the different documents and data from the Understanding America Study's Understanding Coronavirus in America check out our webinar (slides available here).

For more information or if you have any questions, submit a question here or contact us at uas-l@maillist.usc.edu.


Below is a summary of information, graphics, and topline data associated with specific media releases. For a full set of documents and data, please visit the Data and Documentation tabs. An overall description of the UAS Covid-19 surveys can be found in the UAS COVID-19 Panel Description.

Subscribe here to receive future news releases.


May 20 2021 News Release : Pandemic Misery Index: 80% of U.S. adults experienced serious pandemic hardship.
February 25 2021 News Release : COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Education Divide Widens.
January 21 2021 News Release : Most U.S. Adults Wear Masks – Inconsistently.
December 14 2020 News Release : Among couples, the pandemic continues to disproportionately impact women.
August 4 2020 News Release : Pandemic may delay college graduation for students of color.
July 7 2020 News Release : COVID-related discrimination unduly impacts racial minorities.
June 18 2020 News Release : Gender Differences in the Impact of COVID-19.
June 4 2020 News Release : Anxiety and depression associated with COVID-19 peaked in early April – but then declined.
May 21 2020 News Release: Unemployment benefits help some, but COVID-19 hits the disadvantaged hard.
April 30 2020 News Release: National Survey: School Engagement Surprisingly High, Despite Concerns about the Future.
April 17 2020 News release: National Survey Reveals Extent of Coronavirus-Related Job Loss and Outsized Impact on Blacks, Latinos.
March 18 2020 News release: What do Americans think of their chances of being infected with Coronavirus?
March 13 2020 Early Data News Release: People in the US are changing their behavior, anticipating fallout of COVID-19.


For more information or if you have any questions, submit a question here or contact us at uas-l@maillist.usc.edu.


Publications about and/or using data collected in the UAS Understanding Coronavirus in America Study are published in a variety of outlets. Please use the links below to explore in more detail.

  • Academic Papers: includes journal papers, conference papers and working papers written about the UAS Understanding Coronavirus in America Study.
  • Online Posts: contains blog posts and other online mentions of the UAS Understanding Coronavirus in America Study.
  • Media Reports: lists mentions of the UAS Understanding Coronavirus in America Study in the media.

To see all publications written using UAS data click here. If you would like us to host publication-related final analysis data sets for authors of publications based on UAS Covid-19 data, read our data management policies.


Acknowledgement to include in presentations and publications based on CESR covid data sets
Please use this version of the acknowledgement included in your data use agreement, to which we have added our main funders.
The project described in this paper relies on data from survey(s) administered by the Understanding America Study, which is maintained by the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) at the University of Southern California. The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of USC or UAS. The collection of the UAS COVID-19 tracking data is supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and by grant U01AG054580 from the National Institute on Aging, and many others.

For more information or if you have any questions, contact us at uas-l@maillist.usc.edu.