Work

Association of Political Party Affiliation With Physical Distancing Among Young Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: Association of Political Party Affiliation With Physical Distancing Among Young Adults During the COVID-19 PandemicPublic messages about physical distancing during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US have diverged across government officials and news media outlets with different political leanings. 1 Prior studies found that people with Republican (vs other) political party affiliations report less physical distancing.2,3 These studies used crowdsourced internet samples, inadequately adjusted for confounders, collected data before widespread public health messaging about physical distancing, or included few young adults.2,3 Adults aged 18 to 25 years might be inclined to contravene physical distancing guidelines and participate in highrisk social recreational activities that increase the risk of transmitting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. 3 We estimated the associations of political party affiliation with physical distancing behaviors among young adults-a population with high rates of COVID-19.4 Methods | Ninth grade high school students (n = 3396) were originally recruited in Los Angeles, California, in 2013, provided informed written consent, and were surveyed (semi) annually about health behaviors.5 This cross-sectional study analyzed self-report data from the most recent (May 18-August 3, 2020) survey administered online.The University of Southern California institutional review board approved the study.Written informed consent was obtained and the survey responses were analyzed in a deidentified data set.A political party affiliation survey item with 6 response options was collapsed into 4 categories ("Democrat," "Republican," "Independent," "something else," "don't know" or "prefer not to answer").Physical distancing (defined as staying ≥6 feet away from others) over the past 2 weeks with 5 response options was made a binary outcome (infrequent ["sometimes" or "rarely"] vs frequent ["usually," "always," or "not been in public places"]).Past 2-week frequency of engaging in 4 social recreational activities (listed in Table 1) was measured.Responses to the 4 items ("0," "1," "2-3" [recoded = 2.5], "4-6" [recoded = 5], or "≥7" [recoded = 7] times) were summed into a continuous outcome (range: 0-28) and examined individually as binary outcomes (≥1 vs 0 times).Associations of political party with physical distancing were estimated in linear (continuous outcomes) or logistic (dichotomous outcomes) regression models, yielding regression weights (B; mean difference) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% CIs, respectively.Planned pairwise tests compared Republicans with each other group.After unadjusted models, we adjusted for a priori confounders (eg, demographics, perceived COVID-19 vulnerability, and youth and adult risktaking behaviors) (Table 2).[1][2][3] Statistical significance was P < .05(2-tailed).

Source: JAMA Internal Medicine

DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.6898