Individuals have different ways of coping with crisis. Individual factors, family and contextual features, and community support may influence how individuals feel, think and act during a crisis. COVID-19 was an unexpected pandemic that forced many European countries to take confinement measures and restrict social face to face interactions. This study is an effort to understand how Portuguese residents dealt with the pandemic during the first confinement period, considering different sociodemographic characteristics and trauma exposure perceptions. Five hundred and five adults, between 18 and 79 years old participated in this study via an online self-report assessment protocol. Sociodemographic characteristics such as gender, age, marital status, employment status, and caring responsibilities had an impact on individuals’ perceptions regarding their exposure to the pandemic and their quality of life. Perceived exposure to the pandemic was found to predict quality of life in the physical, psychological, and environmental domains. Results have practical implications for European and local policy-making, as well as for targeting psychological interventions for those whose mental health has been negatively affected by the pandemic and for those who may become more affected if confinement measures are implemented again.

Fluency is a central skill for successful reading. Research has provided evidence that systematic reading fluency interventions can be effective. However, research is scarce on the effects of interventions delivered remotely versus face-to-face. This study investigated the efficacy of a systematic and standardized intervention for promoting reading fluency in third-grade students (N = 207) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study had a pretest, posttest, and follow-up design, with two intervention groups (remote vs face-to-face) and a control group. The intervention groups experienced 20 intervention sessions (2 sessions per week), each lasting approximately 50 min. Word reading accuracy, text reading accuracy, and fluency were measured in the three rounds of assessment. In both intervention groups, all measures of reading showed gains from pretest to posttest. The results also suggested that the efficacy of the intervention was similar in the remote and face-to-face modalities. These findings highlight the relevance of systematic interventions in increasing reading fluency and support the use of remote interventions as an adequate alternative to face-to-face interventions.

This study investigates the measurement invariance as a function of gender and educational level of the Homework Behavior Questionnaire (Ktpc), an instrument developed to assess students' homework selfregulation strategies. A sample of 1400 elementary and middle school students was used. Results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit of the theoretical model composed of three dimensions: planning, execution and evaluation of the homework completion. The results also provided evidence for the existence of metric invariance and partial scalar measurement invariance across boys and girls and across the elementary school and the middle school students. The reliability of the scores in the three dimensions was high. Girls obtained higher scores than boys in planning, execution and evaluation. Middle school students had lower scores in planning compared to the elementary school students. These findings are discussed, and their implications for practice are highlighted.

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