US Shelter in Place Policies and Child Abuse Google Search Volume during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Citation

Riddell, Corinne A.; Farkas, Kriszta; Neumann, Krista; Santaularia, N. Jeanie; Ahern, Jennifer; & Mason, Susan M. (2022). US Shelter in Place Policies and Child Abuse Google Search Volume during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Preventive Medicine, 163, 107215. PMCID: PMC9395225

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unemployment, school closures, movement restrictions, and social isolation, all of which are child abuse risk factors. Our objective was to estimate the effect of COVID-19 shelter in place (SIP) policies on child abuse as captured by Google searches. We applied a differences-in-differences design to estimate the effect of SIP on child abuse search volume. We linked state-level SIP policies to outcome data from the Google Health Trends Application Programming Interface. The outcome was searches for child abuse-related phrases as a scaled proportion of total searches for each state-week between December 31, 2017 and June 14, 2020. Between 914 and 1512 phrases were included for each abuse subdomain (physical, sexual, and emotional). Eight states and DC were excluded because of suppressed outcome data. Of the remaining states, 38 introduced a SIP policy between March 19, 2020 and April 7, 2020 and 4 states did not. The introduction of SIP generally led to no change, except for a slight reduction in child abuse search volume in weeks 8-10 post-SIP introduction, net of changes experienced by states that did not introduce SIP at the same time. We did not find strong evidence for an effect of SIP on child abuse searches. However, an increase in total search volume during the pandemic that may be differential between states with and without SIP policies could have biased these findings. Future work should examine the effect of SIP at the individual and population level using other data sources.

URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107215

Reference Type

Journal Article

Year Published

2022

Journal Title

Preventive Medicine

Author(s)

Riddell, Corinne A.
Farkas, Kriszta
Neumann, Krista
Santaularia, N. Jeanie
Ahern, Jennifer
Mason, Susan M.

Article Type

Regular

PMCID

PMC9395225

Data Set/Study

Google Health Trends Application Programming Interface

Continent/Country

United States of America

State

Nonspecific