2021/07/07 by Maximilian Mozes, Mozes, Maximilian, Isabelle van der Vegt +3
Social Sciences · Psychology · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Mental Health via Writing #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.03466
The introduction of COVID-19 lockdown measures and an outlook on return to\nnormality are demanding societal changes. Among the most pressing questions is\nhow individuals adjust to the pandemic. This paper examines the emotional\nresponses to the pandemic in a repeated-measures design. Data (n=1698) were\ncollected in April 2020 (during strict lockdown measures) and in April 2021\n(when vaccination programmes gained traction). We asked participants to report\ntheir emotions and express these in text data. Statistical tests revealed an\naverage trend towards better adjustment to the pandemic. However, clustering\nanalyses suggested a more complex heterogeneous pattern with a well-coping and\na resigning subgroup of participants. Linguistic computational analyses\nuncovered that topics and n-gram frequencies shifted towards attention to the\nvaccination programme and away from general worrying. Implications for public\nmental health efforts in identifying people at heightened risk are discussed.\nThe dataset is made publicly available.\n