“Stress During COVID-19: The Role of Fear and Health Across Age Groups” - Jill Chonody, Barbra Teater, Katrina Hannan, Katie Hall

Abstract:

The severity and magnitude of COVID-19 has led people to experience immense stress and uncertainty have profoundly impacted the people in a multitude of ways, including lost loved ones and ongoing social isolation. The stress that COVID-19 has caused is immeasurable (Pearman et al., 2020) and is likely to have an impact for years to come.

Data were collected from an online questionnaire distributed through social media (e.g, Facebook) and Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an Amazon service that recruits participants for monetary reward ($0.75). MTurk “master workers” were utilized, which are those with a low survey rejection rate, indicating response bias was not suspected. Participants were aged 18+ and US residents. About half of the sample (N = 458) was gained from each of the two data collection strategies, MTurk (n = 245) and social media (n = 213).

Due to incomplete data, a total of 412 participants remained for analysis. The sample was on average 42 years old and were women (61%) and White (71%). Stress was moderately high (6.9 on 10-point scale); alcohol use was indicated as the “same” by a slight majority (52%); and nearly half were working the same amount (45%). Participants had moderate pre-COVID stress levels with around a two-point increase during-COVID, and older participants had the lowest stress levels. The one-step OLS regression for the whole sample explained 47% of the variance in stress. Seven variables were significant: more conversations about COVID, using more alcohol, knowing someone with COVID, increased fear, greater avoidance of reading/watching information about COVID, decreased health status, and increased income. All of the effect sizes were small (Cohen, 1988). To determine how these factors helped explain stress by age group, three regressions were completed by age—older, middle, and younger adults.

Results of the regression for older participants explained the most variance (66%), and three variables were significant: more use of alcohol, increased fear, and decreased health status. Fear had a medium effect size (β = .67), and the other two variables had small effect sizes. The model for middle-aged participants explained 52% variance, and four variables were significant: more conversations about COVID, increased fear, decreased health status, and increased income. Lastly, the model for younger participants explained 37% of the variance, and the regression results indicated three variables were significant: more conversations about COVID, increased fear, and decreased health status.

Results of this study add to the growing substantive literature regarding COVID-19 and provide insight into specific variables by age group, which speaks to how different interventions and coping strategies may need to be modified by age group. While fear was the largest factor for everyone, understanding the source of that fear and how individuals are addressing it (or avoiding it) is important for social workers. Participants in this study had moderately low to moderate levels of stress prior to COVID, but this increased by nearly two points across every age group, which is indicative of how hard this illness has been on the psyche of Americans.