Daily uplifts during the COVID-19 pandemic: what is considered helpful in everyday life?

Abstract

Background Knowledge of what is uplifting and helpful during pandemics could inform the design of sustainable pandemic recommendations in the future. We have explored individuals’ views on helpful and uplifting aspects of everyday life during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods Participants answered a brief, daily survey via text messages during 14 consecutive days in July–August, 2020. The survey included the question: “During the past 24 hours, is there anything that has made you feel good or helped you in your life?” We used content analysis to compile responses from 693 participants, who provided 4,490 free-text answers, which resulted in 24 categories subsumed under 7 themes. Results Positive aspects during the COVID-19 pandemic primarily related to social interactions, in real life or digitally, with family, friends and others. Other important aspects concerning work, colleagues and maintaining everyday life routines. One theme concerning vacations, going on excursions and being in nature. Leisure and recreation activities, such as hobbies and physical exercise, also emerged as important, as did health-related factors. Bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and activities that benefited well-being were mentioned frequently. Lastly, people commented on the government strategies for containing COVID-19, and whether to comply with restrictions. Conclusions To summarize, daily uplifts and helpful aspects of everyday life centered around social relationships. To comply with recommendations on physical distancing, people found creative ways to maintain social connections both digitally and face-to-face. Social interaction, maintenance of everyday life routines, hobbies and physical activity appeared to be important for well-being.

A snapshot sample on how COVID-19 impacted and holds up a mirror to European water education

“…The low response rate to our survey may be because the population of hydrology teachers was too small or because our e-mail with the survey link was flagged as spam or not forwarded within the respective departments. COVID-19 aroused the curiosity of many scientists and educators (including the authors) in studying its effects on education in various scientific fields (Aristovnik et al, 2020;Eklund et al, 2022;Fischer, 2020;Bormann et al, 2021;Fox et al, 2021;Gonzalez et al, 2020;Haley et al, 2021;Keržič et al, 2021;Marzoli et al, 2021;Romeo et al, 2021;Salling Olesen et al, 2021;Wanigasooriya et al, 2021;Stracke et al, 2022). The many surveys conducted in relation to COVID-19 might have caused a certain survey fatigue, as de Koning et al (2021) described, which may also have been the case with our study.…”

“…A time-independent factor contributing to the negative learning experience could be the loss of human interaction (Marzoli et al, 2021;Eklund et al, 2022;Ljunghammar and Waxell, 2020;Romeo et al, 2021). Traditional classroom teaching comprises student-teacher and student-student interaction (discussing e.g.…”

“…Instead, in distance education such important physical, psychological, and social factors are missing or are limited (Berry, 2019;Lehman, 2006;Raffetti and Di Baldassarre, 2022), affecting the students' metacognition (Romeo et al, 2021;Eklund et al, 2022). A lack of social interaction can make students lose self-motivation or social skills or become unaware of limits and obligations, leading potentially to anxiety and depression (Marzoli et al, 2021;Eklund et al, 2022;Ljunghammar and Waxell, 2020;Romeo et al, 2021). This demonstrates that for students it is not sufficient to acquire only theoretical knowledge.…”

The Thin Ideal and Attitudes towards Appearance as Correlates of Exercise Addiction among Sporty People during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has brought dramatic changes to everyday life [ 1 , 2 ]. Scholars argued that the experience of lockdown and home confinement due to the pandemic has been an undesirable condition, which has negatively impacted individuals’ wellbeing [ 3 , 4 ].…”

Stressors and uplifts of confinement due to covid‐19: A longitudinal study on mental health in a sample of academic and administrative university staff in Spain

“…Measured along with stressors, uplifts have proven to be strong predictors of well‐being and health‐related outcomes (DeLongis et al., 1982 ; Eklund et al., 2022 ; Kanner et al., 1981 ; Maybery & Graham, 2001 ; Pinquart & Sörensen, 2004 ). Nonetheless, few studies have focussed on uplifts during COVID‐19.…”