A repeated-measures study on emotional responses after a year in the pandemic

TL;DR

This study tracked emotional responses over a year during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing overall adaptation but also identifying subgroups with different coping patterns and linguistic shifts towards vaccination focus.

Contribution

It provides a longitudinal analysis of emotional adjustment during the pandemic, highlighting heterogeneity and linguistic changes in public responses.

Findings

Overall emotional adjustment improved over time

Identified subgroups with different coping strategies

Linguistic focus shifted towards vaccination and away from worry

Abstract

The introduction of COVID-19 lockdown measures and an outlook on return to normality are demanding societal changes. Among the most pressing questions is how individuals adjust to the pandemic. This paper examines the emotional responses to the pandemic in a repeated-measures design. Data (n=1698) were collected in April 2020 (during strict lockdown measures) and in April 2021 (when vaccination programmes gained traction). We asked participants to report their emotions and express these in text data. Statistical tests revealed an average trend towards better adjustment to the pandemic. However, clustering analyses suggested a more complex heterogeneous pattern with a well-coping and a resigning subgroup of participants. Linguistic computational analyses uncovered that topics and n-gram frequencies shifted towards attention to the vaccination programme and away from general worrying. Implications for public mental health efforts in identifying people at heightened risk are discussed. The dataset is made publicly available.