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Understanding Daily Psychological Well-being in the Context of the Early COVID-19 Environment

Creative Commons 'BY-ND' version 4.0 license
Abstract

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a pervasive environment that was both novel and unescapable for people everywhere. This prolonged and massive event operated across multiple levels of influence with impacts ranging from the most distal global environment to the most proximal immediate environment of daily life. Individuals had to deal with wide-spread challenges and uncertainties, including coping with stay-at-home orders, adapting to new safety requirements and policies, and facing fear and risk of infection as well as symptoms from the virus itself. In order to investigate the impacts of this environment on daily psychological well-being, this dissertation identified innovative environmental measures of that COVID-19 environment and connected them to individuals’ ecological momentary assessment outcomes, bridging community level indicators with person level experiences. This work addressed a critical gap in the COVID-19 literature, namely that COVID-19 pandemic was not a monolithic experience but a dynamic and complex environment. Specifically, Study 1 examined the role of daily changes in COVID-19 severity at the state level by using reported cases and deaths in February and March of 2020 to predict daily distress and distress variability in emerging adults. It also considered the differential effects of accumulated cases (or deaths) and daily new cases (or deaths). Study 2 examined relationships between community level COVID-19 information seeking and individual worry and coping self-efficacy. Internet search data was used as an indicator of community information seeking based on high interest search terms related to COVID-19 and critical lockdown material resources. Findings from both studies provide support for the role of the COVID-19 environment in daily well-being at multiple levels of influence. Distress, worry, and coping all showed evidence of environmental influences. Additionally, this work supports the critical need for investigating environments and their connections over time in models that allow both the environment and the individuals to change. This work has implications for understanding the complicated well-being effects of the COVID-19 environment and findings can be expanded to other crisis and chronic stress environments. It also provides a model for more precise within-person research that better models and measures environments and the impact of those environments on key individual health and well-being outcomes.

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