“What do you think people feel?” Emotional climate during a pandemic: Adaptation and validation of a scale

Abstract

Our study examined the psychometric properties and factor structure of an instrument to assess emotional climate during the COVID-19 pandemic using a sample of 601 Portuguese individuals. Two sub-samples were created, one to perform an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), composed of 300 participants, and the other to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), composed of 301 individuals. Two factors were found: positive and negative emotional climate. In the EFA, both factors established a negative and significant correlation. However, the CFA presented a better fit with two independent factors. Reliability analysis indicated acceptable values for both dimensions. There was also evidence of discriminant, convergent, and criterion validity. More negative emotions were perceived regarding the social climate. Results were discussed in the frame of different positive and negative psychosocial variables related to positive and negative emotional climates, as well as positive emotional climate as a resource for collective resilience.

Emotions and Coping: “What I Feel about It, Gives Me More Strategies to Deal with It?”

“…These types of emotions and feelings have been identified in other studies [4,5] and are related to distress and depression responses to COVID-19 [42]. Emotional and affective states, such as insecurity, nervousness, apprehension, despair, and preoccupation, probably related to the categorization of this threat as uncertain, unknown, and uncontrollable, also appear, in accordance with findings from other studies [8,9,34]. Sadness and frustration as negative emotions have also been related to distress and depression during COVID-19 [42].…”

“…The items are as follows: (1) interested; (2) (25) despair. The 25 items were obtained from three sources: the positive and negative affect schedule, PANAS, adapted to the Portuguese language [39]; Izard's differential emotion scale (DES), adapted by Vinagre [40]; and affective states studied in uncertain and vulnerable contexts [34,41]. We asked participants "To what extent did you feel the following emotions and affective states regarding the pandemic context"?…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic was considered an unpleasant and uncontrollable event, full of feelings of uncertainty [4,5] and a major threat, characterized by an "unknown threat affect" [34]. Accordingly, our study intends to also cover a range of affective states related to these attributions.…”

Razón y emoción en la policia militar: El papel del clima emocional en las prácticas de recursos humanos desde la perspectiva de la lógica institucional

“…Alguns desses tipos emocionais já vem sendo encontrado em alguns eventos como estudos de ataques terroristas em que foram encontradas associações de climas emocionais como raiva e tristeza (Garcia & Rimé, 2019) e; raiva e medo (Kim, 2016). Em casos de vítimas de delito associados a climas emocionais negativos (De Sousa et al, 2021;Muratori & Zubieta, 2016), em propostas de estratégias contra o clima de medo e ansiedade na Covid-19 (Rico et al, 2020), e na verificação da esperança e medo como moderadores de comportamento na prestação de serviço em ambiente de Covid-19 (Yang et al, 2021).…”