Getting Data Access

The Delphi Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), in partnership with Facebook, has conducted the COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey (CTIS) to better understand the spread of COVID-19 and its effects on public health and well-being. This may help improve our local and national responses to the pandemic and our understanding of how it has affected society.

High-level aggregates of select survey items are publicly available in the COVIDcast API. Finer aggregates grouped by various demographic characteristics are available for download.

Getting Microdata Access

De-identified individual survey responses can be made available to researchers associated with universities or non-profit organizations who agree to a Data Use Agreement (DUA). The microdata is archived by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan:

  • Reinhart, Alex, Mejia, Robin, and Tibshirani, Ryan J. COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey (CTIS), United States, 2020-2022. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-02-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR39207.v1

Follow the link to view the data description and documentation, and to request access to the restricted microdata. The survey documentation, including full codebooks and user guides, is available for public download. Microdata access is no longer available through direct agreements with Carnegie Mellon University, so all access must be requested through ICPSR.

The United States survey protocol has been reviewed by the Carnegie Mellon University Institutional Review Board with IRB ID STUDY2020_00000162.

Some important notes about obtaining access to the individual survey responses:

  • You should be familiar with the survey’s limitations and ensure the survey data is suitable for your research goals.
  • Your research purpose must be consistent with the consent language used in Wave 1 of the survey, which states the responses may be used to create “a better public health understanding of where the coronavirus pandemic is moving, to improve our local and national responses.” While the consent language changed in Wave 4 to allow more uses, we are not currently able to adjust the DUAs to support different use cases.
  • Part- or full-time employees of Facebook are not eligible to receive data access, since Delphi’s agreement with Facebook to protect the privacy of respondents prohibits Facebook employees from receiving any microdata.

If you have questions about the process, or your IRB needs information about the survey for their review, contact us at delphi-survey-info@lists.andrew.cmu.edu. For all questions about ICPSR’s restricted data access process, contact ICPSR through the forms or email addresses on their website.