VISIT STATE HEALTH COMPARE
Blog & News
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey
July 19, 2021:Update 6: June 9 to June 21
The COVID-19 vaccines promise to help protect individual Americans against infection and eventually provide population-level herd immunity. After several months of rolling out the various one and two-shot COVID-19 vaccines, which have included hiccups from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, vaccination rates continue to increase at a slow but steady pace. Although the country fell short of meeting the current administration’s goal of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by July 4 (as measured by official administrative data reported to the Centers for Disease Control [CDC]), several states have achieved this goal.
Over the past several months, all states have increased COVID-19 vaccine rollout by expanding vaccine access to the general adult population and children over 12. However, there are still concerns on prioritization decisions and the existing mechanisms of the vaccine rollout—in addition to evidence that lower-income individuals, people of color, and individuals without strong connections to the health care system are less likely to get vaccinated—which have created challenges in equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and could worsen existing pandemic-related health inequities.
The available data have not assuaged these concerns, and show patterns of lower vaccination rates among people with lower levels of education, no health insurance coverage, and marginalized racial and ethnic groups. The U.S. Census Bureau recently released updated data on take-up of COVID-19 vaccines from its Household Pulse Survey (HPS), collected June 9-21, 2021. The HPS is an ongoing, biweekly tracking survey designed to measure impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These data provide an updated snapshot of COVID-19 vaccination rates and are the only data source to do so at the state level by subpopulation.
This blog post presents top-level findings from these new data, focusing on rates of vaccination (one or more doses) among U.S. adults (age 18 and older) living in households and comparing to results from the last half of March, the most recent time period of comparison from this ongoing blog series.
These data represent the latest release from Phase 3.1 of the HPS, which has a biweekly data collection and dissemination approach. The Census Bureau has indicated that it plans to continue administering the survey through December 2021.
Nationally, over three-fourths of adults had received a vaccination, but this varied by state
According to the new HPS data, 79.1% of U.S. adults had received one or more COVID-19 vaccinations towards the end of June1, though this varied by state from a low of 63.9% in Mississippi to a high of 91.0% in Massachusetts. At least four in five adults had received a vaccine in 22 states and the District of Columbia.
Vaccination rates increased considerably across all states; states with lower rates catching up
Nationally, adult vaccination rates substantially increased from the last half of March, rising from 47.0% during March 17-29, 2021, to 79.1% during June 9-21, 2021. Many states experienced large increases in their vaccination rates. The size of these increases varied from an 11.2 percentage-point (PP) increase in North Dakota to a 46.1 PP increase in Massachusetts. Five states saw increases of 40.0 PP or larger: Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Percent of Adults Who Had Received a COVID-19 Vaccine, 2021
Disparities in vaccination rates improved, but slowly and unevenly
Although there have been ongoing strategies to achieve health equity in COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, vaccination rates continued to vary to a great degree by demographic and socioeconomic factors. Gaps in vaccination compared to the national average narrowed slightly for most groups, though some saw larger improvements. As with previous iterations in this blog series, vaccination rates were lower for certain subpopulations such as Black adults, adults who identified as “Some other race/Multiple races,” adults without a high school education, and adults without health insurance coverage. More resources, attention, or new strategies may be needed to close the gaps for these hardest-to-reach groups.
Asian and White adults continued to have above-average vaccination rates at 94.6% and 79.5%, respectively. Rates among Black adults (71.9%) and adults identifying with “Two or more” (Multiple) or “Some other” race (68.5%) continued to be below the national average. Rates among Hispanic/Latino adults improved, and are now above the national average at 79.6%. Hispanic/Latino adults also saw the largest improvement relative to the national average, going from almost 20 percent below the national average in late March (37.9% vs. 47.0%) to nearly one percent above the national average in June (79.6% vs. 79.1%).
Percent of Adults Who Had Received a COVID-19 Vaccine by Race/Ethnicity, 2021
Disparities by education level remained, with adults holding a bachelor’s degree or higher continuing to have the highest vaccination rate at 90.8%, and adults without a high school diploma having the lowest vaccination rate at 68.6%. Despite having the lowest vaccination rate, adults without a high school diploma had the largest relative improvement to the national average, going from 38 percent below the national average in March (29.2% vs. 47.0%) to 13 percent below the national average in June (68.6% vs. 79.1%). Vaccination rates among adults with a high school degree or equivalent and adults with some college or an associate’s degree also improved somewhat relative to the national average.
Adults with health insurance coverage had an above-average vaccination rate at 82.4%, while uninsured adults had a below-average vaccination rate at 61.4%. Regardless of having a rate substantially below the average, the rate among those not covered by any type of health insurance had a notable improvement relative to the national average, going from 50 percent below the national average in March (23.7% vs. 47.0%) to 22 percent below the national average in June (61.4% vs. 79.1%).
Percent of Adults Who Had Received a COVID-19 Vaccine by Education and Health Insurance Status, 2021
Notes about the Household Pulse Survey Data
The estimated rates presented in this post were pulled from the HPS COVID-19 Vaccination Tracker published by the Census Bureau. Though these counts are accompanied by standard errors, standard errors are not able to be accurately calculated for rate estimates. Therefore, we are not able to determine if the differences we found in our analysis are statistically significant or if the estimates themselves are statistically reliable. Estimates and differences for subpopulations at the state level should be assumed to have large confidence intervals around them and caution should be taken when drawing strong conclusions from this analysis. However, the fact that these indications of COVID-19 inequities mirror patterns of other vaccinations inequities demonstrate reason for concern.
Though produced by the U.S. Census Bureau, the HPS is considered an “experimental” survey and does not necessarily meet the Census Bureau’s high standards for data quality and statistical reliability. For example, the survey has relatively low response rates (6.4% for June 9-21), and sampled individuals are contacted via email and text message, asking them to complete an internet-based survey. These issues in particular could be potential sources of bias, but come with the tradeoffs of increased speed and flexibility in data collection as well as lower costs. A future post will investigate differences between COVID-19 vaccination rates estimated from survey data (such as the HPS) and administrative sources. The estimates presented this post are based on responses from 68,067 adults. More information about the data and methods for the Household Pulse Survey can be found in a previous SHADAC blog post.
Previous Blogs in the Series
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Analysis of the Household Pulse Survey (Update 5: March 17 to March 29) (SHADAC Blog)
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Analysis of the Household Pulse Survey (Update 4: March 3 to March 15) (SHADAC Blog)
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey (Update 3: Feb 17 to March 1) (SHADAC Blog)
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey (Update 2: Feb 3 to Feb 15) (SHADAC Blog)
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey (Update: Jan 10 to Feb 1) (SHADAC Blog)
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: New State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey (Jan 6 to Jan 18) (SHADAC Blog)
Related Reading
Vaccine Hesitancy Decreased During the First Three Months of the Year: New Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey (SHADAC Blog)
State-level Flu Vaccination Rates among Key Population Subgroups (50-state profiles) (SHADAC Infographics)
50-State Infographics: A State-level Look at Flu Vaccination Rates among Key Population Subgroups (SHADAC Blog)
Anticipating COVID-19 Vaccination Challenges through Flu Vaccination Patterns (SHADAC Brief)
New Brief Examines Flu Vaccine Patterns as a Proxy for COVID – Anticipating and Addressing Coronavirus Vaccination Campaign Challenges at the National and State Level (SHADAC Blog)
Ensuring Equity: State Strategies for Monitoring COVID-19 Vaccination Rates by Race and Other Priority Populations (Expert Perspective for State Health & Value Strategies)
SHADAC Webinar - Anticipating COVID-19 Vaccination Challenges through Flu Vaccination Patterns (February 4th) (SHADAC Webinar)
1 Note that it is not unusual for there to be appreciable differences between survey-based estimates and those derived from administrative data, as there are here between the vaccination rates observed in the HPS and those seen in CDC administrative vaccination data. There could be several reasons for these differences, including differences in the population universe (i.e., household-residing adults vs. total adult population), differences in the measured time period, the inaccuracies between self-reported vs. administratively collected data, and differences in the representativeness of survey vs. administrative data. Although administrative data are often thought to be more accurate than survey-based estimates, survey data such as the HPS have the advantage of providing more granular detail about the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of populations of interest that are often unavailable or incomplete in administrative data.
Blog & News
New Study Shows Heightened Mental Health Burdens for Young Adults, Adults with Lower Incomes or Lower Education Levels, and Adults who Experienced Income Loss during the COVID Pandemic
July 1, 2021:As rates of COVID vaccination increase around the world and the nation, attention is beginning to turn toward addressing more of the non-physical impacts and effects of the virus, such as the mental health burdens borne by large segments of the population.1
In a new issue brief released this week, SHADAC researchers used the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey to study the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and mental health burdens for the United States’ adult population. Based on data gathered in April/May through December of 2020, the brief’s authors found that reported rates of combined and individual symptoms of anxiety and depression in the first part of the year were more than triple when compared with data from a similar time period in a related survey, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). The HPS found a rate of 35.9 percent of adults reporting anxiety or depression symptoms in April/May 2020, versus 11.0 percent from the NHIS in January-June 2019.2 And rates only continued to grow significantly throughout the remainder of 2020, reaching a peak of 41.9 percent in December.
In particular, the analysis found that the highest rates of these mental health burdens were borne by younger adults, adults with less than a high school education, adults with lower incomes, and adults who experienced or anticipated job-related income loss. In each case, reported rates of anxiety or depression symptoms were significantly higher than those for the total population (41.9 percent).
In December 2020…
…younger people consistently reported the highest rates of anxiety or depression, with more than half (56.4 percent) of 18-29 year-olds reporting symptoms of anxiety or depression, a significantly higher rate than this same group reported in April/May 2020.
…roughly one-half (51.2%) of adults with less than a high school education reported anxiety or depression symptoms.
…more than half (58.2 percent) of adults with household incomes of less than $25,000 reported anxiety or depressions symptoms, a statistically significant increase over their April/May 2020 rate.
The HPS also collected data on anxiety and depression symptoms from adults who had either experienced or anticipated a job-related income loss during the 2020 year. Just over one-half of individuals (53.2 percent) who had experienced an employment income loss reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, which was significantly higher than the roughly one-third (31.5 percent) rate among people who hadn’t experienced such a loss. An even greater number of people who anticipated an employment income loss (58.0 percent) reported anxiety or depression symptoms, which was again significantly higher than the approximately one-third (35.0 percent) rate among people who didn’t anticipate such a loss.
The pandemic's toll on mental health, especially for younger adults, has become increasingly worrisome in recent months.3 Mental health burdens, such as suicide deaths, were already an area of concern prior to COVID, with rates trending upward in the years before 2020.4
It is important for policymakers, as they consider directing resources toward addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on their individual populations, to understand which groups (i.e., younger adults, adults with lower incomes and education levels, and adults who experienced income losses) might benefit most from outreach to connect them with or increase their access to mental health care services.
Explore Additional COVID-related SHADAC Work Using the HPS
SHADAC previously wrote a blog post that provided an overview of the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) methodology as well as survey and questionnaire updates.
SHADAC has also used HPS data to track vaccination rates for a range of demographic groups, producing our own state-level estimates of vaccination rates for a biweekly blog series.
Additionally, SHADAC produced a blog studying vaccine hesitancy rates among adults during the first part of 2021.
1 Tully, T. (Updated 2021, June 11). Covid-19: U.S. Vaccine Production and Supply Increase After Snowstorms Caused Delays. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/23/world/covid-19-coronavirus
Soucheray, S. (2021, May 28). COVID-19 vaccinations increase in US, but unevenly. Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP). https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/05/covid-19-vaccinations-increase-us-unevenly
Abbot, A. (February 2021). COVID’s mental-health toll: how scientists are tracking a surge in depression. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00175-z
2 The pandemic-era rates from the CDC study and the HPS are not perfectly comparable to the pre-pandemic rates from the NHIS because they come from different surveys with different methodologies. However, since they ask essentially the same questions on anxiety and depression, the rates should presumably be similar, so the substantially higher estimates in the pandemic-era surveys provide reason for concern.
3 Fernandez, M.E. (2021, March 8). AHA News: COVID-19 Mental Health Crisis Is Hitting Young Adults. U.S. News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-03-08/aha-news-covid-19-mental-health-crisis-is-hitting-young-adults
4 Planalp, C., Hest, R., & Au-Yeung, C. (June 2020). Suicide Rates on the Rise: National Trends and Demographics in Suicide Deaths from 2000 to 2018. State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC). https://www.shadac.org/sites/default/files/publications/2020_NATIONAL-Suicide-brief.pdf
Hill, R.M., Rufino, K., Kurian, S., Saxena, J., Saxena, K., & Williams, L. (March 2021). Suicide Ideation and Attempts in a Pediatric Emergency Department Before and During COVID-19. Pediatrics, 147(3), e2020029280; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-029280
Publication
COVID-19 Pandemic Coincided with Elevated and Increasing Anxiety and Depression Symptoms
SHADAC Director Dr. Lynn Blewett and SHADAC Researchers Colin Planalp and Robert Hest used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) to study rates of anxiety and depression in the U.S. adult population for the months of April to December 2020.
The brief looks at both combined and individual rates of reported anxiety and depression symptoms for the total adult population as well as by specific breakdowns, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, income and education levels, and employment status.
Designed to provide near-real-time estimates of the economic, financial, and health impacts of the pandemic, the HPS asks questions covering topics such as health insurance coverage, medical treatment, employment status, and job loss, food security, and transportation access, among others. The HPS questions used in the analysis of this brief were adapted by the Census Bureau from a four-item screening tool commonly used by health care providers to identify symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Though the United States is beginning to emerge from the darkest days of the pandemic, it is important to remember that this crisis affected not only physical health, but mental health as well, and these burdens must be continued to be monitored and addressed at the local, state, and national levels. This brief provides an overview of mental health impacts on different portions of the populations, and highlights which groups may benefit from particular outreach to connect them with needed mental health care.
Explore Additional COVID-related SHADAC Work Using the HPS
SHADAC previously wrote a blog post that provided an overview of the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) methodology as well as survey and questionnaire updates.
SHADAC has also used HPS data to track vaccination rates for a range of demographic groups, producing our own state-level estimates of vaccination rates for a biweekly blog series.
Additionally, SHADAC produced a blog studying vaccine hesitancy rates among adults during the first part of 2021.
Blog & News
SHADAC at the 2021 Virtual AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM)
June 11, 2021:The 2021 AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (ARM) is taking place virtually this week from June 14-17. Researcher and State Health Compare manager Robert Hest will be presenting on behalf of SHADAC at the national conference. His presentations include:
Trends in Health Insurance Coverage during the COVID-19 Pandemic: New Monthly Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey - Robert Hest, MPP; Yun Taek Oh, MPP; Lynn A. Blewett, MPA, PhD
Monday, June 14, 2021 | 12:30 PM-12:45 PM (Late-breaking session)
The COVID-19 pandemic has created historically large disruptions to the economy and health insurance coverage at a time when having access to health care is especially important. Our study uses a new data source, the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, to examine how coverage has evolved over the course of the pandemic, presenting monthly estimates of coverage from late-April 2020 through April 2021 by Medicaid Expansion status and race/ethnicity. We found substantial disruptions to employer-sponsored coverage during the pandemic that were partially offset by increases in Medicaid coverage, highlighting the critical importance of Medicaid as a safety net program. Coverage disruptions were not felt equally throughout the population, with Hispanic and Black adults, as well adults identifying with some "other or multiple races," facing larger coverage losses compared with White adults and the overall population. Click here to download slides.
Physician Acceptance of New Medicaid Patients: National and State-level Findings from the National Electronic Health Records Survey - Robert Hest, MPP; Martha Heberlein, MA
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 | 1:30-2:30 (State Health Research and Policy Interest Group)
Medicaid is an essential source of health insurance coverage for more than 86 million Americans, but providing access to care enrollees can be a challenge if physicians do not accept Medicaid patients. Our work provides new evidence from the National Electronic Health Records Survey (NEHRS) about the percent of physicians who accept new Medicaid patients, presenting estimates at the state level and by physician and practice characteristics. Physicians are less likely to accept new Medicaid patients compared to patients with Medicare or private insurance coverage. The percent of physicians who accept new Medicaid patients varies substantially across states and across physician characteristics such as setting, specialty, existing Medicaid caseload, and ratio of mid-level providers. Click here to download slides.
View the full presentation schedule for SHADAC and our University of Minnesota colleagues, here.
Blog & News
Measuring Coronavirus Impacts with the Census Bureau's New Household Pulse Survey: Utilizing the Data and Understanding the Methodology
May 22, 2020:The COVID-19 pandemic is having broad-ranging impacts on the health and economic security of Americans across the country, and policymakers, among others, are eager to understand the extent of these impacts and how they vary across states and key subpopulations such as race/ethnicity, given the concerns that historically disadvantaged racial and ethnic minority groups are being disproportionately affected. The Household Pulse Survey (HPS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in collaboration with five other federal agencies, is designed to provide near real-time information on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting American households in all 50 states, the District of Columbia (D.C.), and 15 large metropolitan areas. This page hosts the links to SHADAC's ongoing analyses on the take-up of COVID-19 vaccines in the states and provides an overview of the content and methodology of the HPS.
UTILIZATION
COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: New State-level and Subpopulation Evidence from the Household Pulse Survey - Blog Series
As part of SHADAC's commitment to monitoring the impact of the pandemic, we are producing an ongoing series of blogs and data visuals on state vaccination rollout. Recent HPS data provide estimates of COVID-19 vaccination rates at the state level and by subpopulation. This blog series presents top-level findings from these new data, focusing on rates of vaccination (one or more doses) among U.S. adults (age 18 and older) living in a household unit.
Updated post: July 19, 2021
Updated post: April 14, 2021
Updated post: March 25, 2021
Updated post: March 12, 2021
Updated post: February 25, 2021
Updated post: February 11, 2021
Original post: January 29, 2021
METHODOLOGY
Overview
The Household Pulse Survey is designed to provide up-to-date information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment, spending, food and housing security, disruptions to education, physical and mental wellbeing, and health insurance and access to care. The survey is being conducted over the course of 12 weeks beginning on April 23, 2020. Invited respondents will be contacted via email and text message and will be asked to take the survey online. Results are scheduled to be published on a weekly basis, one week after the end of each weekly data collection period.
The survey was developed as a collaboration between the U.S. Census Bureau and five additional federal agencies: the USDA Economic Research Service, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Census Bureau, known for conducting large benchmark surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS), is producing the survey as one of the first projects in its new Experimental Data Products series.
Survey Content
The Household Pulse Survey consists of 50 questions, covering a range of topics designed to measure how households are being impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. These include questions related to health insurance coverage, access to health care, and physical/mental health, in addition to questions concerning income and employment, food security, housing security, and access to education. The content of the questionnaire may be revised after the first one-to-two weeks of circulation in the field based on feedback from expert reviewers and debriefings with field staff.
Health Insurance and Access to Care
The survey contains three questions related to health insurance coverage and access to health care, which are the same health insurance question used by the ACS. The first asks, “Are you currently covered by any of the following types of health insurance or health coverage plans?” Respondents are invited to “Mark Yes or No for each,” allowing them to select from employer-sponsored coverage, direct purchase coverage, Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, VA, IHS, and other types of health coverage.
Respondents are then asked two questions aimed at measuring changes in access to care due to the pandemic: “At any time in the last 4 weeks, did you DELAY getting medical care because of the coronavirus pandemic?” and “At any time in the last 4 weeks, did you need medical care for something other than coronavirus, but DID NOT GET IT because of the coronavirus pandemic?” These questions appear to be unique to this survey, as typical questions on this topic ask about care delayed or foregone due to cost or due to other barriers such as transportation, and measures of access to care in other surveys often use the past year as the reference period rather than the last four weeks.
Health Status and Mental Wellbeing
The HPS has one health status question and four questions related to mental health and wellbeing. The survey first asks about current health status: “Would you say your health, in general, is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?”
In the next four questions, the survey asks respondents how often in the past seven days (“not at all, several days, more than half the days, or nearly every day”) they have been bothered by each of four problems: “Feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge? Not being able to stop or control worrying? Having little interest or pleasure in doing things? Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?” The first two questions come from the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-Item scale (GAD-7); the second two come from the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) screening tool for depression.
Reporting of Estimates
In its initial release, Census published results from the first two weeks of the survey as data tables and via an interactive data tool; the former containing national estimates, and the latter containing a limited set of state-level estimates. Whereas the data tables report only weighted counts and means, the interactive data tool contains a mix of percentages and weighted counts. No standard errors were published in this initial release.
In an effort to quickly report results of the survey, and in contrast with their typical practice, the Census Bureau did not perform any edits or statistical imputation for the majority of the survey results but is instead providing estimates of “Did Not Report” responses as a separate category. This separation makes it difficult to compare count estimates over time and against imputed estimates from other data sources since the count estimates in the HPS are substantially affected by the numbers in the “Did Not Report” category.
In calculating percentages or rates based on these counts, the Census Bureau suggests that excluding the “Did Not Report” category from the denominator will produce percentages that are more comparable to those resulting from statistical imputation. This is the method that the Census Bureau uses to construct the percentages included in the interactive data tool.
Sample Design
The HPS is being conducted for 12 weeks beginning April 23 and utilizes an overlapping weekly panel of respondents, each of whom will be surveyed once per week for three consecutive weeks before being replaced by a new panel. Due to issues with data collection in the first week of the survey, the first contact period was extended one week to cover the period of April 23-May 5, 2020, with the second contact period running from May 7-12. (This post mirrors the Census’ language and refers to these periods as “Week One” and “Week Two.”)
The Census Bureau sampled nearly 1.9 million housing units in Week One of the survey, and more than 1.0 million in Week Two. The Census Bureau plans to sample an additional 1.1 million addresses in each additional week of data collection, with the goal of ensuring that the survey remains representative of the United States’ population. In total, the survey is anticipated to sample approximately 13.8 million housing units and collect roughly 108,000 responses per week, for an approximate 5.0 percent response rate. This was the sample size the Census Bureau deemed necessary to detect a 2.0 percentage-point weekly change in an estimate of 40 percent of the population at national, state, and metropolitan area levels. However, in Weeks One and Two of data collection, the HPS collected only 74,500 and 42,000 responses, respectively, translating to response rates of 3.8 percent and 1.3 percent.
The survey is contacting respondents via email and text message using an address-based sample drawn from the Master Address File. The Census Bureau obtained email addresses and phone numbers from commercial sources, from respondents to the ACS, and decennial census tests, along with other administrative sources. The cell phone frame has more than 87 million addresses with a cell phone number, and the email frame has more than 107 million addresses with an email address. These frames respectively cover 88.0 and 80.0 percent of the country’s addresses. Sampled households are being initially contacted by email if available and then by text message, rotating contact via email and text daily until all contact information has been tried. The survey is being administered online via Qualtrics.
The HPS is designed to be representative of the adult population living in households. Though the survey asks respondents about their household composition (i.e., number of adults and children in the household), the survey only provides information about the primary respondent, rather than all members of the household.
More information about the methodology of the survey, including state-level sample sizes, are available in the Census Bureau’s published technical documentation.
Update January 27, 2021
Phase 3 of the Household Pulse Survey has been extended from its original end date of December 21, 2020 to run through March 1, 2021. Beginning with Week 22 (January 6, 2021 – January 18, 2021), there were slight changes to the questionnaire with the addition of questions regarding individuals’ intention to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and the removal of some questions for which utility has declined over time.
Update November 24, 2020
The HPS has now been extended into three distinct data-collection phases. The third phase is currently underway, having started on October 31, 2020, and will continue through December 21, 2020. The first of the results were published on November 18, 2020, with further results planned for publication every two weeks following that. The second phase of the HPS ran from August 19, 2020, through October 26, 2020 and the data collection time switched from weekly to a two-week period, though for the sake of continuity, each collection period is still called a "week." No changes in either the questionnaire or data collection methods were made between the second and the third phase of the survey.
Update August 20, 2020
The first results from the HPS were published on May 20, 2020 and have continued to be published through July 29, 2020. SHADAC has continued to monitor survey results as they have been released in order to understand how the pandemic is affecting Americans’ health, wellbeing, and access to health care over time. As part of this observation, we recently noted when the Census Bureau proposed an extension of the data collection period for the Household Pulse Survey from 90 days (original end date July 31, 2020) to 24 weeks (end date October 13, 2020). The Office of Management and Budget approved the Census Bureau's request on July 31, 2020. A new version of the survey, complete with a revised questionnaire that focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on education and housing, will be circulated for a second phase of data collection shortly. SHADAC will continue to monitor this second wave of the survey, and will provide updates as results are released.
