Contact tracing interviews (CTIs) are a key part of our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a tool for prevention of spread of future outbreaks. Although CTIs are fundamentally a memory task, few studies have analyzed the ability to recall contacts, and none to our knowledge have looked at this ability across the lifespan. Research has generally found that children and the elderly often perform worse on memory tasks than adolescents and young and middle-aged adults. As such, there is reason for concern about the completeness of reports provided in CTIs, particularly for children and the elderly.

This research thus had two main goals: (1) assessing the development of the ability to recall contacts and (2) analyzing the ability of interview techniques to bolster recall of close contacts in a CTI. Across the course of two studies that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested the efficacy of a psychologically- and developmentally-informed CTI (enhanced protocol) versus a standard CTI. The enhanced protocol applied well-established memory techniques, such as searching through memory multiple times, and providing a variety of memory prompts. Delivery of the interviews (i.e., interview modality) varied such that an interviewer conducted half of the interviews via video-conferencing and the other half were conducted via an online self-led interview. In the self-led version there was no interviewer; instructions were provided via videos and text, and participants entered their contacts into textboxes.

Study 1 tested the effectiveness of the interview protocols across both modalities (with and without an interviewer) with 200 adult participants. Study 2 was largely identical, but included participants from across the lifespan. Approximately 268 participants between 9 and 89 years of age took part in Study 2. Participants were recruited nationally using a variety of sources, including Amazon Mechanical Turk, public libraries, listserves, and social media. For both studies, participants completed a screening appointment on Zoom to ensure their eligibility. A second session was scheduled with qualifying participants during which the participants completed their interview, consistent with their randomly assigned condition (e.g., interviewer-led standard interview, self-led enhanced protocol, etc.). All participants were asked to report their contacts from the past 6 days.   

In both Study 1 and Study 2, the enhanced protocol increased the number of contacts reported as compared to the control protocol by >50%. Further, it did not matter in either study if the interview was led by an interviewer or was self-led; modality had no effect on the number of contacts recalled. In Study 2, these results held across the lifespan with participants between the ages of 9 and 89. All individuals recalled more ?familiar? contacts than ?somewhat familiar? or ?unfamiliar? contacts. The enhanced interview protocol, however, helped individuals recall more unfamiliar contacts than they did with the control protocol.

These findings suggest that implementing psychologically-informed interview techniques can significantly increase the number of contacts reported during contact tracing interviews and help individuals recall contacts beyond easy-to-rememeber, highly familiar others. Further, these improvements can be achieved in an interviewer-free context, reducing time and resource requirements.

The funding for this research has provided numerous educational opportunities for both doctoral students and undergraduates. Our team involves four doctoral students and dozens of undergraduate research assistants across two different campuses.  We have either presented or submitted portions of the results of the two studies nationally and internationally. Most of these presentations were first authored and presented by either a doctoral student or an undergraduate. The results of this research have also been submitted for publication at peer-reviewed journals. Further, a preprint of the Study 1 findings was posted on PsyArXiv and the materials and data for Study 1 are available on Open Science Framework.

We also developed a publicly-available tool called CogTracer. CogTracer is a web-based self-led contact tracing interview based in the results of our research.  The purpose of this website is to make the research available to the public in a format that is free and easy to use. We hope that the development of this tool not only helps individuals who may have been exposed to COVID-19 but inspires continued innovation within the fields of psychology, child development, and public health. To help spread the word about CogTracer, we had a video created to promote the tool, and engaged with the media in various ways, including publishing a piece in The Conversation.

Last Modified: 10/29/2021
Modified by: Deborah Goldfarb