The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many young adults’ lives educationally, economically, and personally. This study investigated associations between COVID-19-related disruption and perception of increases in internalising symptoms among young adults and whether these associations were moderated by earlier measures of adolescent positivity and future orientation and parental psychological control. Participants included 1329 adolescents at Time 1, and 810 of those participants as young adults (M age = 20, 50.4% female) at Time 2 from 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States). Drawing from a larger longitudinal study of adolescent risk taking and young adult competence, this study controlled for earlier levels of internalising symptoms during adolescence in examining these associations. Higher levels of adolescent positivity and future orientation as well as parent psychological control during late adolescence helped protect young adults from sharper perceived increases in anxiety and depression during the first nine months of widespread pandemic lockdowns in all nine countries. Findings are discussed in terms of how families in the 21st century can foster greater resilience during and after adolescence when faced with community-wide stressors, and the results provide new information about how psychological control may play a protective role during times of significant community-wide threats to personal health and welfare.
Post-traumatic growth is a compelling idea (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2014), yet, extant research has often employed retrospective reports of change, rather than examining change over time. In Karakter, we followed a sample of Syrian origin young adults who recently resettled in the Netherlands (initial N = 168) four times over a 13-month period to examine experiences of adversity, emotions, and positive personality change. We provide initial insights by narrating the changes, challenges, and opportunities we encountered in the research. We describe how we incorporated open science practices in Karakter. We propose analyses that describe the demographic characteristics (e.g., education level, length of stay in the Netherlands, and family members present in the Netherlands and in Syria), experiences of adversity (i.e., past traumatic experiences and current post-migration problems), positive personality traits (i.e., attachment, resilient coping, empathy, gratitude, and compassion), and the Big Five personality traits of the people in our sample. We close by suggesting good practices for researchers who are interested in conducting similar studies with populations that are traditionally considered hard-to-reach in the future.
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