The COVID-19 symptom surveys are designed to help researchers better monitor and forecast the spread of COVID-19. In partnership with University of Maryland and Carnegie Mellon University, Facebook users are invited to take surveys conducted by these two partner universities to self-report COVID-19-related symptoms. The surveys may be used to generate new insights on how to respond to the crisis, including heat maps of self-reported symptoms. This information may help health systems plan where resources are needed and potentially when, where, and how to reopen parts of society.
University of Maryland’s Joint Program in Survey Methodology is the survey host for the non-US Survey and Carnegie Mellon University’s Delphi Research Group is the survey host for the US survey. Both universities collaborated with the broader public health community in the design of the surveys. Facebook does not host the surveys nor collect survey participant responses, and only has access to public, aggregated survey data provided by the universities. To ensure that the survey is representative of the characteristics of the population, Facebook calculates and shares a survey weight to help researchers correct for sampling bias.
