The where and when of COVID-19: Using ecological and Twitter-based assessments to examine impacts in a temporal and community context

Abstract

In March 2020, residents of the Bronx, New York experienced one of the first significant community COVID-19 outbreaks in the United States. Focusing on intensive longitudinal data from 78 Bronx-based older adults, we used a multi-method approach to (1) examine 2019 to early pandemic (February-June 2020) changes in momentary psychological well-being of Einstein Aging Study (EAS) participants and (2) to contextualize these changes with community distress scores collected from public Twitter posts posted in Bronx County. We found increases in mean loneliness from 2019 to 2020; and participants that were higher in neuroticism had greater increases in thought unpleasantness and feeling depressed. Twitter-based Bronx community scores of anxiety, depressivity, and negatively-valenced affect showed elevated levels in 2020 weeks relative to 2019. Integration of EAS participant data and community data showed week-to-week fluctuations across 2019 and 2020. Results highlight how community-level data can characterize a rapidly changing environment to supplement individual-level data at no additional burden to individual participants.