Background To limit the rapid spread of COVID‐19, countries have asked their citizens to stay at home. As a result, demographic and cultural factors related to home life have become especially relevant to predict population well‐being during isolation. This pre‐registered worldwide study analyses the relationship between the number of adults and children in a household, marital status, age, gender, education level, COVID‐19 severity, individualism–collectivism, and perceived stress. Methods We used the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey data of 53,524 online participants from 26 countries and areas. The data were collected between 30 March and 6 April 2020. Results Higher levels of stress were associated with younger age, being a woman, lower level of education, being single, staying with more children, and living in a country or area with a more severe COVID‐19 situation. Conclusions The COVID‐19 pandemic revealed that certain people may be more susceptible to experience elevated levels of stress. Our findings highlight the need for public health to be attentive to both the physical and the psychological well‐being of these groups.

This N = 173,426 social science dataset was collected through the collaborative COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey – an open science effort to improve understanding of the human experiences of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic between 30th March and 30th May, 2020. The dataset allows a cross-cultural study of psychological and behavioural responses to the Coronavirus pandemic and associated government measures like cancellation of public functions and stay at home orders implemented in many countries. The dataset contains demographic background variables as well as measures of Asian Disease Problem, perceived stress (PSS-10), availability of social provisions (SPS-10), trust in various authorities, trust in governmental measures to contain the virus (OECD trust), personality traits (BFF-15), information behaviours, agreement with the level of government intervention, and compliance with preventive measures, along with a rich pool of exploratory variables and written experiences. A global consortium from 39 countries and regions worked together to build and translate a survey with variables of shared interests, and recruited participants in 47 languages and dialects. Raw plus cleaned data and dynamic visualizations are available.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world.

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVIDiSTRESS Consortium launched an open-access global survey to understand and improve individuals’ experiences related to the crisis. A year later, we extended this line of research by launching a new survey to address the dynamic landscape of the pandemic. This survey was released with the goal of addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion by working with over 150 researchers across the globe who collected data in 48 languages and dialects across 137 countries. The resulting cleaned dataset described here includes 15,740 of over 20,000 responses. The dataset allows cross-cultural study of psychological wellbeing and behaviours a year into the pandemic. It includes measures of stress, resilience, vaccine attitudes, trust in government and scientists, compliance, and information acquisition and misperceptions regarding COVID-19. Open-access raw and cleaned datasets with computed scores are available. Just as our initial COVIDiSTRESS dataset has facilitated government policy decisions regarding health crises, this dataset can be used by researchers and policy makers to inform research, decisions, and policy.

To limit the rapid spread of COVID-19, countries have asked their citizens to stay at home. As a result, demographic and cultural factors related to home life became especially relevant to predicting population well-being during isolation. This pre-registered worldwide study analyses the relationship between the number of adults and children in a household, marital status, age, gender, individualism-collectivism and perceived stress. We used the COVIDiSTRESS Global Survey data of 54,245 online participants from 27 countries. The data was collected worldwide between March 30 and April 6, 2020. Our results provide evidence that higher levels of stress are associated with younger age, being a woman, being single, staying with more children, and living in collectivistic cultures. We discuss our findings by emphasizing the need for the public health to focus on both physical and psychological well-being of these groups, as they may be especially susceptible to experiencing elevated levels of stress.