Emotions, mood and coping strategies in the Coronavirus pandemic

The aims of the study are i. to collect information regarding aspects related to the mental health of university students and the general Brazilian population considering the current context of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; ii. to collect information about these aspects in a convenience population in the United States of America (USA); iii. to verify the measurement invariance of the psychometric instruments between independent samples (according to demographic characteristics) and different countries (Brazil x USA); and iv. to estimate the impact of emotions and mood on pandemic coping strategies adopted by adult Brazilian and North American individuals. This is a cross-sectional study. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21), the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS) and the Brief COPE Scale will be used as measurement instruments. The validity and reliability of the data will be evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis and coefficient omega, respectively. Measurement invariance of the factorial model of each instrument applied to the different samples (student x general population, states and other characteristics of interest) will be analyzed using multigroup analysis (deltaCFI). The transnational invariance will also be analyzed. The mean scores for depression, anxiety, stress, mood changes and coping strategies will be calculated by point and by 95% confidence interval considering the total sample and other subsamples. The impact of emotions and mood on the coping strategies used by individuals will be estimated using a structural model. The evaluation of this model will be carried out in two steps. In the first step, the goodness-of-fit of the model to the data will be evaluated using X2/df, CFI, TFI and RMSEA. The Weighted Least Squares Mean and Variance Adjusted (WLSMV) estimation method will be used. In the second step, the significance of the hypothetical trajectories (b) of each independent variable will be evaluated using the z-test (significance level = 5%). The qualitative analysis of the answers given to the open answer questions will be carried out through content analysis and elaboration of the discourse of the collective subject (DCS). (AU)