Social Determinants of Health: Follow Up Survey Details and Resources

Survey Design

The All of Us Research Program Social Determinants of Health survey asks about a participant’s neighborhood, social life, stress, and feelings about everyday life. The survey includes 82 items (79 main items and 3 related follow-ups) from the following sources: the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS), the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS), the Social Cohesion Neighborhood Scale, the Ross-Mirowsky Perceived Neighborhood Disorder Scale, the PANES International Prevalence Study (IPS) on Physical Activity, the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS), and the RAND Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey.

Scoring Considerations for the Social Determinants of Health Survey

The Social Determinants of Health survey is composed of items from multiple sources and so can not be scored as a whole. The survey does, however, include items from several scales that can be scored on their own. These include the RAND Health Care Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) Social Support Survey, Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), UCLA Loneliness Scale, Social Cohesion Neighborhood Scale, Children’s HealthWatch Hunger Vital Sign, and Accountable Health Communities: Housing Insecurity. 

Sample Eligibility

The survey is considered a “follow-up” survey and is available to all All of Us participants after completion of the Basics, Overall Health, and Lifestyle surveys.

For more information about survey samples and releases, please see [Introduction to All of Us Survey Collection and Data Transformation Methods]

Data Model & Privacy Protection Considerations

All survey codebook variables (e.g., source codes) are deposited into the OMOP Common Data Model’s observation table and stored as concepts in an AoU specific “PPI” vocabulary. This vocabulary is both browsable and downloadable via Athena, the online OMOP repository - for a listing of concepts specific to the Social Determinants of Health survey, please see this Athena entry. 

Note about data integrity: 

• All participant responses collected over a nine day range for the item, How often do you attend church or religious services, have been marked as “invalid” in the Registered and Controlled Tier CDRs due to an isolated survey configuration discrepancy that occurred. These items are denoted with concept ID 2000000010 (AoUDRC_ResponseRemoval) and include a description of the response removed. 

Select items from the Social Determinants of Health survey have been either suppressed or generalized within the Registered and Controlled Tiers. Please see below for these specifics, which are also captured in the All of Us survey codebook and How All of Us Protects Participant Privacy. 

Registered and Controlled Tier Privacy Considerations for the Social Determinants of Health Survey