Surveys
How is this different than an in-person or remote visit?
Completing a survey for Project Viva can be done on your own time and does not need to be scheduled like an in-person or remote visit. You also do not need to come into the office to complete a survey or have a scheduled meeting with Project Viva staff.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a survey?
Advantages of a survey: There are many advantages to collecting data through surveys for both participants and Project Viva. It is very convenient to complete a survey because you can do it on your own, at any time and any place. You may also pause taking the survey and come back to finish it with an access code. Surveys are also much faster than in-person or remote visits, but still allow us to collect important data at different timepoints.
Disadvantages of a survey: Surveys are less in depth and collect different types of information than in-person and remote visits. However, all information that we collect from these surveys is highly valuable and will very much contribute to our scientific endeavors. Project Viva staff will not accompany you when taking the survey, which means we cannot immediately answer any questions or issues that may arise as you take the survey. If you do have any questions, please contact Project Viva at any time! Call us at: 617-867-4251 or email us at: Project_Viva@harvardpilgrim.org.
You make us better!
Many of you have given us feedback in the comments section of our surveys which is very helpful to Project Viva as we work to continuously improve the study. We want to assure you that everyone at Project Viva is listening to you and we greatly value all the thoughtful comments you send us. We encourage all of you to send us any feedback you may have at any time and we will take it into careful consideration and work to move forward in the best way we can. Thank you for helping us learn and grow!
Why does Project Viva do annual surveys and what is the goal of these surveys?
Project Viva does annual surveys to track the changes of our participants throughout the years. Annual surveys allow us to get up to date information as both participants’ lives and the current world events change over time. Project Viva is an ongoing longitudinal study which means we want to look at changes over a longer period of time. Please use the directory on the left to learn more about our current annual survey: Age 19 Questionnaire for Young Adults and Age 19 Questionnaire for Parents. Moving forward, our annual questionnaires will correspond to the calendar year. So be on the lookout our 2022 survey!
How can you complete a survey?
• Electronic: If we have your email address and you have agreed to be contacted through that method, when you are eligible, you will be sent a welcome email and survey link to complete your survey.
• Mailed paper survey: If you do not have an email or do not wish to be contacted through email, we will send you a mailed paper copy of the survey and consent form.
2022 Annual Survey
Goal of the Survey:
In the survey for Young Adults, we will ask questions about your physical and mental health and behaviors, your experiences that contribute to health throughout your life, your ability to access and use
healthcare, and COVID-19 infection and vaccination. These questions help us understand how our participants’ lives and health change over time, including during a global pandemic. As you all continue to get older, Project Viva Investigators are interested in better understanding your health as young adults.
In the survey for Moms, we will ask questions about your physical and mental health and behaviors, your experiences that contribute to health throughout your
life, your ability to access and use healthcare, and COVID-19 infection and vaccination. These questions help us understand how our participants’ lives and health change over time, including during a global pandemic. As you all continue to get older, Project Viva Investigators are interested in better understanding your health as young adults.
• Even if you have not participated with Viva in recent visit visits or questionnaires, or if you are a Viva mom or young adult participating individually, your contributions are just as valued. Please join us in this important work!
• If you’re not comfortable answering some of the questions on these surveys, that’s okay! Any responses that you give are valuable to us, you don’t have to answer any question that you don’t want to answer.
• Your continued participation in this survey helps us to further our very important work in Project Viva, as well as our collaboration with the ECHO Program. Your participation is crucial to our mission to improve the health of children for generations to come. Thank you for your continued participation!
Eligibility:
Young Adults and Parents will receive 2022 Annual Survey. If we have an email address on file for you, we will send the questionnaire to you via email. Project Viva is no longer enrolling new participants. If you are an enrolled Project Viva participant and want to participate or if you have not received the Questionnaire for Young Adults or Questionnaire for Parents and think that you should have, please click below to email us about your interest!
Survey Details:
Collecting contact information for fathers/other parental figures: We would like to collect contact information for your/your Viva young adult’s biological father and any other father figures (e.g. adoptive father, stepfather) or parental figures (e.g. your/your Viva mom’s female or non-binary partner). Please note that providing this contact information will not enroll these individuals into Project Viva or in any way obligate them to participate. In the future, we will reach out to invite them to be a part of the study and if they agree, ask questions about their health and background. As always, you should feel free to skip any questions that you do not feel comfortable answering. We will also provide a space where you can offer additional information that you may want us to know about your/your Viva young adult’s relationship with biological fathers/parental figures, or about why you chose not to provide this information.
ECHO Addendum: If you have not previously provided a consent response for the ECHO program, there will be an ECHO-specific addendum at the beginning of the survey. This addendum is NOT related to your participation in Project Viva or your participation in this survey. As a reminder, Project Viva is collaborating with ECHO—a research program launched by the National Institutes of Health that includes over 50,000 participants and is striving to understand the effects of environmental influences on child health and development. You will not see an addendum if you have already provided a response to an ECHO consent in a previous visit or survey.
Return code: If you’re unable to complete your survey in one sitting, you can save your progress on the survey and come back to it later. Just make sure to click the “Save and Return” button at the end of the page and write down the provided return code. When you are ready to resume the questionnaire, click the survey link again, and enter the code to finish the survey where you left off.
Contact Information: At the end of each survey, we’ll ask you to update your contact information. Especially as our Viva kids are becoming young adults and their own research participants separate from their Viva moms, and as Viva moms will be invited to participate in Women’s Health-focused research, it is important that we are able to contact each of our participants directly to share new participation opportunities and research findings.
Comments: Many participants have written to us in the comments section at the end of these surveys – thank you! We encourage all of you to send us any feedback you may have at any time and we will take it into careful consideration and work to move forward in the best way we can. We are grateful for this thoughtful feedback, it helps us to learn, grow, and better understand our participants.
Raffle: After completing this survey, you will be entered into a raffle where five participants will win $50 in e-gift cards each month.
Survey Results:
Coming soon! We will post some initial findings from the 2022 Annual Survey here once the survey is closed at the end of the year!
Age 19 Survey
Survey Results:
As the Project Viva team continues to make strides in our work to improve the health of families and future generations, we wanted to share some of our findings from this survey. We sent this survey out to all Viva participants from December 2019 through July 2022. As we continue to examine the Age 19 Survey data, we wanted to share some preliminary results with you below. Based on your comments and feedback, many of you expressed that you were interested in seeing results about mental health, daily activities and behaviors, and how those topics affect family relationships. We summarized your responses to some of the questions on these topics in this letter and we hope that you find it interesting to see these results.
Young Adult Rating of Physical and Mental Health
We asked Project Viva young adults to rate their physical and mental health in the past 30 days. Figure 1 shows responses ranged from “poor” to “excellent.” On average, Viva young adults rated their physical health slightly better than their mental health. Physical and mental health are closely related, and both contribute to our overall wellbeing.
If you are interested in learning more about the connection between physical and mental health, here are a few resources you may find helpful to promote both physical and mental health:
Family Relationships
We also asked young adults about their relationship with their family. Most young adults reported feeling a strong relationship with their family, although there were a range of responses (Figure 2). Research suggests having a strong family relationship can lead to better coping skills and healthier behaviors, resulting in overall higher well-being.
Future Positivity
Both young adults and moms told us how positive they felt about their future. Figure 3 shows that response options ranged from “not at all” to “very much,” with most young adults and moms answering “quite a bit” or “very much”. The responses from mom participants were slightly more positive than young adults’ responses. We look forward to digging deeper into the data to understand factors that predict positive thinking and seeing how this affects your future health. While this data shows many positive responses, we recognize that circumstances are always changing and want to provide resources on mental health and family relationships.
Thank you to everyone who completed this survey; your responses are crucial to our scientific research and continue to provide us with invaluable insights. We hope you found these results informative and interesting and that they inspire your continued engagement in Project Viva!
Why does Project Viva do topic-specific surveys and what is the goal of these surveys?
Project Viva sent out topic-specific COVID surveys to collect important data about the impact of COVID-19 on participants. We may send out more topic-specific surveys in the future that are relevant to participants’ health.
COVID Questionnaires
COVID 1.0:
The COVID 1.0 Survey was sent out to participants from May 2020 through August 2020. We received almost 1,000 responses which provided us with valuable scientific data on how the pandemic impacted daily life and experiences. This survey was sent to all eligible participants through email and was completed online. The goal of this survey was to help us better understand the impact of COVID-19 on families and young adults in communities across the U.S. We sent out a results letter for this survey during the Winter of 2020, highlighting some initial discoveries from this survey. Click here to view the full COVID 1.0 Results Letter.
COVID 2.0:
The COVID 2.0 Survey was sent out to participants from February 2021 through September 2021. After receiving such valuable data from the COVID 1.0 Survey, we wanted to expand on it by asking more questions in the COVID 2.0 Survey, including how the pandemic impacted mental and physical health, work, schooling, home life, and other daily experiences. Like the first COVID survey, we sent the COVID 2.0 Survey to all eligible participants through email to be completed online. We received over 1,000 responses and were able to send some initial results to everyone at the end of 2021. Click here to view the full COVID 2.0 Results Letter.
Results:
Testing & COVID-19 Infection
We examined the percentage of COVID-19 testing and infection in Project Viva participants compared to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (MA). While we understand that not all of you live in Massachusetts, most still do. The figures below report the percentage of Viva participants and MA residents tested by nasal swab or blood test for COVID-19. More Project Viva young adults reported being tested compared to Project Viva mothers in the second COVID survey compared to the first COVID survey. However, both young adults and moms reported having been tested at a much higher percent compared to the first COVID survey, when 12% of Moms and 7% of Young Adults reported having been tested. The results also show that Project Viva participants had COVID infections at a similar percentage as the Massachusetts population, consistent across the findings from both COVID surveys.
Sleep and Physical Activity During Covid
These figures demonstrate changes in sleeping and physical activity compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak among Project Viva young adults. The majority of young adults reported getting less physical activity compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak across both surveys. About the same majority percentage of participants reported getting more sleep compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, young adults reported getting worse quality sleep compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak. These trends were reported during both surveys.
We know the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted everyone’s lives and caused us all to make many adjustments over the past couple of years. Here are a few resources you may find helpful in dealing with the stressors of COVID-19:
Contact Us
Study Hotline: 617-867-4251
Text: 617-553-6698
E-mail: Project_Viva@hphc.org