The face-mask question: A survey

Should we or shouldn’t we? Where and when should we? When is it safe not to?

Go directly to the About Those Face-masks Survey.

For the last few weeks, as COVID cases have been dropping in Massachusetts, my daughter, Jess, and I have engaged in a discussion that goes something like this:

Me: So what’s happening with social distancing this week?

Jess: Well, more people are ignoring face-mask policy and others have become face-mask vigilantes.

Me: Hmm. I wonder how they are making their decisions.

Jess: Frankly, I’m having trouble making my own decisions. The guidelines are unclear and change often. And it isn’t straightforward to apply the guidelines in some situations.

Me: Hmm. Makes me even more curious about how people are making their decisions.

The face-mask decision is pretty easy for me.

At 68, I’m in the “high risk” group for COVID-19. I wear a mask whenever I’m around other people, and I plan to continue this behavior until COVID-19 is under control.

But I’ve come to appreciate that it’s often not that easy for others.

Now that things are loosening up in our state, face-mask rules are increasingly murky. For example, we are advised to wear face coverings at all times when we are less than 6 feet from people who aren’t members of our “safe” group. However, in local restaurants masked servers stand closer than 6 feet even though customers are unmasked. As Jess has pointed out, this is troubling for servers whose current customers are likely to represent the more laissez-faire members of our community—the ones at most risk for COVID-19 exposure.

And what about those “safe groups”? What are good rules for safe-group behavior? And how safe are they?

What seems, on the face of it 😊 to be a simple binary choice—to wear or not to wear—becomes increasingly complex as we continue to combat this pandemic.

I’ve let my curiosity get the best of me.

I think it would be useful to know more about how people make decisions about face-mask wearing. So, with a little help from my friends I’ve developed a face-mask survey.

You are hereby invited to take the About Those Face masks survey.

The survey is completely anonymous and shouldn’t take more than 5–10 minutes to complete—unless you decide to write an optional open-ended response. You’ll be asked to rate the importance of several considerations that often come into play when making face-mask decisions, then tell us a few things about yourself. It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s interesting.

I’ll report back when we have over 500 responses.

We’ll need a minimum of 500 responses to make an analysis worthwhile, so I’m counting on you to pass on the link to friends and family. With any luck, we’ll have a story to tell in a few weeks!

Here are some of our research questions.

1. How do different considerations relate to different levels of reported face-mask wearing behavior?
2. Are there sets of considerations that relate to specific reported face-mask wearing behaviors?
3. Do political leanings, religious faith, or gender relate to reported mask-wearing behavior?

Take the About Those Face masks survey, and perhaps we’ll get some answers.