Representative Contact Diaries for Modeling the Spread of Infectious Diseases in Taiwan

Fu, Yang-chih; Wang, Da-Wei; Chuang, Jen-Hsiang

The core survey instrument was a 24-hour contact diary log that recorded every face-to-face interpersonal contact the respondent had made during the past 24 hours. To capture the possible channel of air-borne transmission of influenza, we asked respondents to record physical contacts and those nonphysical contacts with verbal communication made within 2 meters. Part of the diary log followed those used in recent studies elsewhere [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] . This instrument went through a series of modifications after cognitive interviews and a pretest. To ensure that our survey results are representative, we targeted the whole registered population in Taiwan without any age limit. The survey sampling and in-person household interviews were both conducted by the Academia Sinica, Taiwan.