The good, the bad, and the mixed: Experiences during COVID-19 among an online sample of adults

Abstract

Studies have outlined the negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic to psychological health. However, the potential within-individual diversity of experiences during COVID-19, and how such experiences relate to indices of psychological distress and COVID-19-specific stressors, remains to be explored. A large online sample of American MTurk Workers (N = 3,731; Mage = 39.54 years, SD = 13.12; 51.70% female) completed short assessments of psychological distress, COVID-19-specific stressors (e.g., wage loss, death), and seven items assessing negative and positive COVID-19 experiences. Latent profile analyses were used to identify underlying profiles of COVID-19 experiences. A four-profile solution was retained representing profiles that were: (1) predominantly positive (n = 839; 22.49%), (2) predominantly negative (n = 849; 22.76%), (3) moderately mixed (n = 1,748; 46.85%), and (4) high mixed (n = 295; 7.91%). The predominantly positive profile was associated with lower psychological distress, whereas both the predominantly negative and high mixed profiles were associated with higher psychological distress. Interestingly, specific COVID-19 stressful events were associated with the high mixed profile. The present study challenges the narrative that the impacts of COVID-19 have been unilaterally negative. Future directions for research are proposed.

Psychosocial factors related to school satisfaction in times of pandemic in adolescents from northern Chile

“…Having more time for activities and socializing with peers were also signi cant during the pandemic (Magson et al, 2021), and contributed to explaining school satisfaction. This could be attributed to the importance of peers in the pandemic context, which could in uence the perception that everyone was experiencing a similar situation (Mills et al, 2022), as well as the diversi cation of social networks for maintaining contact.…”

“…Furthermore, emphasis has been placed on the communication and social functioning of young individuals, which appears to serve as a supportive element in the face of di culties caused by changes in activities resulting from quarantine measures (Livia et al, 2021). There seemed to be a sense of universality that the pandemic was affecting everyone (Mills et al, 2022). In this context, both positive and negative experiences, as well as the support received during the pandemic, could have in uenced the school life of individuals (Liu et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2022).…”

Multiple group memberships protect against anticipatory anxiety for social situations

“…For example, COVID-19 related policy was implemented at state-level in the United states but was nation-wide in the United Kingdom (Unruh et al, 2022). Equally, participants' individual experiences during 2020 likely differed within the same country, with US research suggesting that not all people experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as negative (Mills, Petrovic, Mettler, Hamza, & Heath, 2022). Participants' pre-pandemic social anxiety symptoms, anticipatory anxiety, and avoidance could not validly be measured retrospectively, which means that they could not be controlled for within our analyses.…”