In April 2020, BroadStreet and The COVID-19 Data Project partnered with Temple University's Center for Public Health Law Research (CPHLR) to look longitudinally at executive orders, health directives, proclamations, and policies related to COVID-19. We have refined CPHLR's process, enabling the collection of city, state, and US territory orders which are then reduced to quantitative and qualitative data to allow for simple access and analysis.
The final data release occurred on March 8th, 2023.
On a weekly basis, new releases of Executive Orders are pulled from The Council of State Governments and public health department websites before being converted, read, and coded for a quality assurance process by the Policy Track team. This stopped in May 2022 due to the changing nature of the COVID-19 policy landscape. Each order is reviewed and compared with the current COVID-19 statutes, regulations, emergency declarations, and mitigation policies dating back to January 20, 2020, as it is the day prior to the first confirmed case of COVID-19 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The original format of the documents is either HTML or PDF. Once the documents have been converted into the Google Doc format, the direct links are incorporated to the shared spreadsheet for the data entry teams to access. Both conversion methods generate spelling and formatting inconsistencies which must be corrected manually. Manual correction may include “auto spell check,” image removal, border removal, and/or hand-typing documents in full. The scope topics and descriptions have been created by Policy Track leaders based on CPHLR’s “protocol notes.” Data entry following the CPHLR protocols includes the analysis and mark-up of the documents and the entering of binary variables pertaining to the inclusion of “in-scope” content. The marked-up document provides the Track leaders and the Quality Assurance (QA) team members with important information and creates a track record of the logged binary variables. The individuals place a 0 (zero) in cells to signify a document does not contain content about the given scope topics; a 1 (one) is placed in cells to signify a document does contain content about the given scope topics. Any ambiguous information in the documents is noted and a detailed review is conducted by the QA team to determine if the content is applicable to the scope topics.
State and territory orders are gathered weekly and typically included in our data one week after they were released. New city, county and federal orders are gathered monthly and currently included in our data when the quantity of released state and territory orders is low. All city and county orders are stored on a spreadsheet for reference as new orders are identified.
In May 2022, Policy Track interns established a protocol to standardize the naming convention of collected orders. This is to identify duplicate orders and link the dataset to the machine-readable files. In addition, a new scope of ‘Governing Body’ is added. It was noted that different entities were responsible for writing the order: the options are Executive Authority and Public Health Department.
The data is in wide format. It is stored in a csv file with the following 25 column fields.
| field_name | description | value |
|---|---|---|
| iden_num | The identification number of the location using FIPS codes | |
| geo_type | Whether the order applies to a city/state/territory | |
| name | The text name of the city/state/territory | |
| order_num | The name of the Executive Order or Proclamation | |
| broadstreet_num | The assigned BroadStreet name of the order | |
| gov_body | The entity that wrote the order | |
| amend | If the order is an amendment to a previous order | 0=no, 1=yes |
| start_d | The date that the order goes into effect | MM/DD/YYYY; with leading zeros (02/17/2009); 0=no date |
| end_d | The date that the order will no longer be in effect | MM/DD/YYYY; with leading zeros (02/17/2009; 0=no date |
| initial_emgcy | If the order is the initial state of emergency declaration | 0=no, 1=yes |
| cont_emgcy | If the order has been released in response to COVID-19 pandemic | 0=no, 1=yes |
| reopen | If the order contains measures related to re-opening | 0=no, 1=yes |
| stay_home | If the order contains measures related to stay at home directives | 0=no, 1=yes |
| curfew | If the order contains measures related to mandated or suggested curfew | 0=no, 1=yes |
| mask_req | If the order contains measures related to mask/face-covering requirements | 0=no, 1=yes |
| gather_ban | If the order contains measures related to gathering ban | 0=no, 1=yes |
| social_dist | If the order contains measures related to social distancing | 0=no, 1=yes |
| bsns | If the order contains measures related to the operation of businesses | 0=no, 1=yes |
| restaurant | If the order contains measures related to the operation of restaurants | 0=no, 1=yes |
| school | If the order contains measures related to the operation of schools | 0=no, 1=yes |
| med_proc | If the order contains measures related to medical procedures | 0=no, 1=yes |
| travel | If the order contains measures related to travel restrictions | 0=no, 1=yes |
| correc_fac | If the order contains measures related to correctional facilities | 0=no, 1=yes |
| vaccine | If the order contains measures related to the COVID-19 vaccine | 0=no, 1=yes |
| notes | Notes about the Order or Proclamation |
The Covid-19 Data Project began in March 2020 to satisfy the driving need for accessible data tracking the spread of the coronavirus across the United States. Over 120 interns and volunteers were recruited via the BroadStreet website, and through institutional reference for interested undergraduate or graduate students. The project quickly grew as the virus spread, leading to a large data set involving historical and present data collection, input, and analysis.
When using data images, downloaded data, or shared document formats, please attribute BroadStreet as well as the original source, when applicable. For examples and more information, review this article which answers the question "How do I cite BroadStreet?"
Isaiah Banta, Robert Birds, Samin Charepoo, Alessandro Malave, Allison Muir, MHA, Dienta Rochani. A full list of the Broadstreet Covid-19 Data Project volunteers can be found at https://covid19dataproject.org/team-2/
Email the primary contributors at: [email protected]