Table 1 Details about the measure of wellbeing
From: The COVID-19 pandemic and wellbeing in Switzerland-worse for young people?
Wellbeing domain | Questions | Response options | Additional details |
|---|---|---|---|
Positive affect and life satisfaction (PALS) | Life satisfaction: In general, how satisfied are you with your life? | 0 (not at all satisfied)–10 (completely satisfied) | Positive affect and life satisfaction was derived by summing up the items, hence ranging from 0 to 60, with a higher score showing greater frequency of negative affect Cronbach’s Alpha (α) = 0.75–0.76 across years |
Health satisfaction: How satisfied are you with your state of health? | 0 (not at all satisfied)–10 (completely satisfied) | ||
Relationships satisfaction: How satisfied are you with your personal, social and family relationships? | 0 (not at all satisfied)–10 (completely satisfied) | ||
Leisure time satisfaction: How satisfied are you with your leisure time activities? | |||
Energy and optimism: Are you often plenty of strength, energy and optimism? | 0 (never)–10 (always) | ||
Joy: How frequently do you generally experience the following emotions? | 0 (never)–10 (always) | ||
Negative affect (NA) | Anger: How frequently do you generally experience the following emotions? | 0 (never)–10 (always) | Negative affect was derived by summing up the items, hence ranging from 0 to 40, with a higher score showing greater frequency of negative affect Cronbach’s Alpha (α) = 0.76–0.78 across years |
Sadness: How frequently do you generally experience the following emotions? | |||
Worry: How frequently do you generally experience the following emotions? | |||
Anxiety and depression: Do you often have negative feelings such as having the blues, being desperate, suffering from anxiety or depression? | |||
Stress | How often have you felt stressed during the last month? | 1 (never)/2 (almost never)/3 (sometimes)/4 (fairly often)/5 (very often) | The variable was normally distributed, hence we treated it as continuous |
Psychosomatic symptoms | Sleeping problems: During the last 4 weeks, have you suffered from any of the following disorders or health problems? | 0 (not at all)/1 (somewhat)/2 (very much) | The proportion of „very much” option was relatively small compared to two other options (on average around 10%). Hence, we binarized the variable (0– “not at all” vs. 1– “somewhat/very much”) allowing to plot a single trajectory per variable, which made the interpretation easier |
Headaches: During the last 4 weeks, have you suffered from any of the following disorders or health problems? | |||
Weakness, weariness: During the last 4 weeks, have you suffered from any of the following disorders or health problems? |