COVIMO – COVID-19 vaccination rate monitoring in Germany

• Background and goal
• Methods
• Results
• Information for participants
• Data protection
• Your rights
• Key data
• Contact

Background and goal

COVIMO is intended to regularly survey the German population on topics related to COVID-19 vaccination. The goal of the COVID-19 vaccination rate monitoring is to capture the willingness and acceptance of different population groups in Germany to get vaccinated, to identify possible barriers to vaccination uptake in a timely manner and to be able to derive appropriate communication measures.

In addition to data on personal characteristics such as age, gender or occupation data in the following categories are collected:

• Vaccination status and willingness to get vaccinated
• Vaccination acceptance or attitude
• Reasons pro or con for the vaccination
• Knowledge about COVID-19 vaccination
• Need for information

Methods

Since January 2021, about 1,000 people of the German population aged 18 and over are being interviewed by telephone every four weeks. The survey will last between 10 and 15 minutes. A total of about 28 data collections will take place until mid-2022. This is a cross-sectional survey.
The survey will take place exclusively by telephone via the Berlin market and social research institute USUMA GmbH on behalf of the Robert Koch Institute.

Results

Report on the current survey (German only): 10. Report (14.4.2022) (PDF, 2 MB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)

The report on the COVIMO focus survey "Germany as an Immigration Society" (9th survey - 3.2.2022) is available in several languages:

Arabic (PDF, 712 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)
English (PDF, 557 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)
German (PDF, 527 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)
Polish (PDF, 600 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)
Russian (PDF, 569 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)
Turkish (PDF, 540 KB, File does not meet accessibility standards.)

Information for participants

Selection of participants

For participation in the COVIMO study, a random sample was drawn from the sampling system of the ADM (English: work group of German market and social research institutes e.V.; German: Arbeitskreis Deutscher Markt- und Sozialforschungsinstitute e.V.).

The sample includes randomly generated mobile and landline numbers. Only persons over the age of 18 are eligible for the telephone survey. If more than one person over the age of 18 lives in the same household, the person to be interviewed is randomly selected again (using the so-called Sweden key).

Only those who have been contacted in this way by USUMA GmbH, which conducts the survey on behalf of the Robert Koch Institute, can participate in the COVIMO study.

Your participation is a valuable contribution

As it is not possible to survey all adults living in Germany, a subgroup (sample) of the population will be selected. This group should represent as accurately as possible the totality of adult women and men aged 18 and over living in Germany. Each person selected at random thus represents a population group.

Your participation helps to ensure that as many groups of the population as possible can be included in the study - only then can the results be generalised to the entire population!

With your answers you also help us to identify questions from the population and need for information. With your participation, you can actively influence the accompanying communication of the COVID-19 vaccination.

Data protection

The General Data Protection Regulation and the Federal Data Protection Act apply

The Robert Koch Institute conducts data collection in strict compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO; German: Datenschutz-Grundverordnung) and the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG; German: Bundesdatenschutzgesetz). The RKI's data protection officer, Claudia Enge, advises and supports the project management on data protection issues.

For participants: It is not possible to draw conclusions about your person

Your contact details (telephone number) will be irrevocably deleted after the survey phase, which is why the survey data can no longer be linked to your person (anonymization).

The results of the survey are only presented in anonymized form and for groups together. This means that the results cannot be linked to the person who provided the information.

The survey is conducted by USUMA GmbH on behalf of the Robert Koch Institute. The data protection basis of the COVIMO study is the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the voluntary commitment of the ADM. All respondents are informed at the beginning of the telephone interview about the voluntary nature of participation, the objectives of the survey and data protection and are asked for their verbal consent to participate. The answers given during the telephone interview may include information about your state of health. These are special protected categories of data according to Art. 9 DSGVO. No telephone interview will be conducted without your consent. You can revoke your consent at any time and terminate your participation in the survey prematurely. A revocation is valid for the future, i.e. processing carried out up to the time of the revocation remains unaffected.

Further data protection measures include:

• The personal data (i.e. phone numbers) are deleted directly after the survey or interview is completed and can thus no longer be linked to the survey data. The data set is thus completely anonymised.
• The interviewers themselves have no access to the survey data and cannot call up data records that have already been completed.
• Contacting, appointment management and the survey itself are computer-assisted using special software. This minimises input errors and maximises data quality.
• Access to the telephone number pool as well as to the survey data is only granted to those staff members who need it for process control or data evaluation.
• The final survey data set is transferred anonymously by USUMA GmbH to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) after completion of the respective survey.
• The data transfer is carried out according to RKI specifications in accordance with data protection regulations, encrypted via a Cryptshare server.

The COVIMO study was checked in advance by the RKI's data protection officer on the basis of the applicable Basic Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO) and the Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG).

Your rights

In order to protect your data subject rights, you may request access to, erasure, restriction of processing, completion or correction of your data, as well as its transfer to you or a third party in a structured, common and machine-readable format (rights under Articles 15, 16, 17, 18 and 20 of the GDPR). Please note that the aforementioned data protection rights can only be fulfilled if the data to which the asserted claims relate can be clearly attributed to your person. Since the RKI receives the survey data in anonymised form, the aforementioned data protection rights cannot usually be fulfilled even with additional information about your identity provided by you.

You also have the right to complain to the competent supervisory authority for the RKI (Art. 77 (1) DSGVO). The competent supervisory authority for the RKI is the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, Graurheindorfer Str. 153, 53117 Bonn.

Further information on data subject rights can be found at: www.rki.de/dataprivacy.

Key data

Project management and contact person: Nora Katharina Schmid-Küpke, Elisa Wulkotte
Project team: Julia Neufeind, Ole Wichmann, Anette Siedler
Project funding: Federal Ministry of Health
Duration: 01.01.2021- 30.06.2022

Contact

Responsible for the study: Robert Koch Institute, Department 33, Seestr. 10, 13353 Berlin
Contact person: Elisa Wulkotte, e-mail: Contact form
Data Protection Officer
Robert Koch Institute, Claudia Enge, Nordufer 20, 13353 Berlin. E-mail: Contact form

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