Longitudinal analysis of the relationship between religiosity and individual well- being in Poland before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic shook up societies, leaving a stigma on the health and well-being of many individuals. How big this stigma was depended on individual factors, which researchers are now trying to relate. One aspect affecting well-being during the pandemic may have been religiosity. In our longitudinal study of a representative sample of Poles, we took two measurements, in March 2021 and April 2022, obtaining a sample of N=622 repeated respondents out of 1000. We categorized participating individuals as religious, fuzzy or secular and, partly using retrospective questions, we compared their levels of well-being (WHO-5 index, Q-LES-Q-SF) before the outbreak as well as one and two years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that in the general population, despite a decline in well-being one year after the pandemic outbreak (2021), there was an improvement in the following year (2022), with religiosity proving to have a positive impact on well-being. The religious category achieved higher well-being values than the secular, especially in March 2021, when the effects of the pandemic were strongly felt in society in the form of lockdowns and the highest number of deaths.