Facebook Launches Survey to Help Health Researchers Forecast COVID-19

Screenshots of Facebook COVID-19 Survey

Facebook is rolling out a survey to help health researchers working to forecast the spread of COVID-19. The survey is run by the Carnegie Mellon University Delphi Research Center.

Screenshots of Facebook COVID-19 Survey

“Off-Facebook” Survey to Help Track Self-Reported Symptoms

The survey is described as being “off-Facebook” in a blog post by KX Jin, Head of Health, and Laura McGorman, Data for Good. The data acquired will be used to, amongst other things, create heat maps of self-reported symptoms. The social media giant said it is tackling privacy concerns by assigning a random ID number to those who complete the survey that will be shared with researchers. In addition, a weight value is assigned to each user and shared with researchers. This is to help correct for sample bias.

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Facebook also announced the rollout of three new types of Disease Prevention Maps. They are intended to help with disease forecasting and protective measures.

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