{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.04792332268370607, 'fraction_numerical': 0.026091586794462194, 'mean_word_length': 5.2425249169435215, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
COMMUNICATION DURING COVID-19: A COMPARISON BETWEEN INSTITUTIONALIZED AND COMMUNITY DWELLING OLDER ADULTS


 COVID-19 has created communication and socialization challenges for many older adults (OAs) living in community or institutional settings (CECs, IECs respectively) and their essential contacts (ECs). An essential contact is someone who provides emotional, physical, and social support for an older adult. While social distancing measures have decreased the spread and infection rate, these measures have placed strain upon communication and socialization needed for wellbeing which may increase the risk of loneliness and subsequently depression, cognitive functioning, and mortality among OAs. This study compared how general, in-person, and distanced communication between CECs and IECs has changed due to COVID-19. Self-identified ECs to OAs (N=546) completed a Qualtrics questionnaire via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Respondents (Age Range: 19-77; Mean=44.3; SD=14.2) were generally female (54.8%), white (81.0%), and CECs (57.3%). Pearson chi-square was used to evaluate the association between EC and communication type. Phi and Cramer’s V were used to measure effect size. IECs were significantly more likely than CECs to report much less general (41.6% vs. 10.7; medium effect) and in-person (60.0% vs. 22.4%; medium effect) social interaction due to COVID-19. IECs were significantly more likely to report much more distanced communication than CECs (42.8% vs 5.2%; small effect). Overall, this suggests community dwelling OAs’ communication and socialization were less impacted by COVID-19 distancing than institutionalized OAs. Thus, institutionalized OAs may be at greater risk for negative effects of social distancing. Future efforts need to focus on prioritizing ways for institutionalized adults to communicate with their ECs if social distancing is needed.