RAPID: Affective Mechanisms of Adjustment in Diverse Emerging Adult Student Communities Before, During, and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic

我们迫切需要了解是什么预示着年轻人健康的心理调整。近年来，年轻人面临着巨大的压力，其中包括与同龄人的社会隔离和学业挑战，在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，压力进一步加剧。科学家们必须更好地了解年轻人的情感生活的哪些部分受到这些社会压力因素的影响最大，以及来自不同背景的年轻人是否受到的影响最大。该项目旨在研究来自北美五所不同大学（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学欧文分校、西北大学和温哥华大学）的大量种族和地理不同的年轻人的情绪调节，这些年轻人在2019冠状病毒病大流行之前和整个过程中都受到了关注。我们将在他们第一次开始研究后的4年和5年随访点进行远程纵向调查，以更好地了解他们目前的情绪、心理健康、社会孤立感和与他人的联系。这个RAPID项目将提供关键的知识，以了解年轻人如何面临情绪困难的风险，或如何从情绪困难中恢复过来，以及社会联系在青年成年的这些形成时期所起的重要作用。从该项目中获得的信息将为以教育为重点的项目提供信息，以支持年轻人在压力时期和大学适应期的情感健康。该项目解决了在COVID-19大流行的全球公共卫生紧急情况下，世界各地大学生的情绪调节和学业成绩这一日益严重的问题。该项目包括创新的远程调查和经验抽样方法，以研究在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间跟踪的大量不同样本的新兴成年人的情绪体验、社会压力源和心理健康。具体来说，该项目使PI及其合作者能够在4年和5年的随访时间点对正在进行的多地点研究进行两项重要的纵向评估，这些研究由几所地理和人口分布不同的大学（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学欧文分校、西北大学和不列颠哥伦比亚大学温哥华分校）领导。因此，该项目涉及从研究开始（2023年秋季）和首次COVID爆发（2024年春季）开始的4年随访点的两次额外随访评估。该项目采用了一种可行的、基于远程的多模式方法，包括(a)基于远程的质量调查，评估情绪调节和情绪困难；(b)基于智能手机的体验技术，评估日常压力源和情绪体验，为期两周的采样期。有三个目的：目的1采用基于调查的设计来检查社会孤立与情绪调节和情绪困难的纵向关联。目的2利用生态有效的经验抽样设计来测试社会压力源维度对日常情绪困难和情绪调节的变异性和水平的双向影响。鉴于这一人群中具有历史边缘化身份的学生（即拉丁裔、黑人和亚洲人）的代表性很强，探索性目标3研究了目标1-2的影响是否在受到额外系统和社会压力因素不成比例影响的边缘化年轻人中被放大。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is a critical need to understand what predicts healthy psychological adjustment among young adults. Young adults have faced significant stress in recent years—worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, including social isolation from their peers and academic challenges. Scientists must better understand which parts of young adult’s emotional lives have been most impacted by these social stressors, as well as whether young adults from diverse backgrounds were impacted hardest. This project aims to study emotional adjustment in a large and ethnically and geographically diverse sample of young adults from five different universities in North America (CU Boulder, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Northwestern University and UBC-Vancouver) who have been followed before and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. We will administer remote-based longitudinal surveys at 4-year and 5-year follow-up points since they first began the study to better understand their current emotions, psychological health, and sense of social isolation and connection with others. This RAPID project will provide critical knowledge to understand how young adults may be at risk for, or resilient from, emotional difficulties and the important role social connection plays during these formative years of young adulthood. Information gained from this project will inform education-focused programs to support emotional wellness for young adults during stressful times and the college adjustment period.This project addresses a critical and growing concern regarding the emotional adjustment and academic outcomes of college students from around the world during a global public health emergency surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This project includes innovative and remote-based survey and experience-sampling approaches to study the emotional experiences, social stressors and psychological health of a large and diverse sample of emerging adults who have been followed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the project enables the ability to conduct two important longitudinal assessments at 4-year and 5-year follow-up time points to an ongoing multi-site study led by the PI and her collaborators across several geographically and demographically diverse universities (the University of Colorado Boulder, University of California Berkeley, University of California Irvine, Northwestern University, and the University of British Columbia Vancouver). As such, this project involves two additional follow-up assessments at a 4-year follow-up point from study entry (Fall 2023) and the initial COVID outbreak (Spring 2024). The project utilizes a feasible and remote-based multi-modal approach including (a) remote-based Qualtrics surveys assessing emotion regulation and mood difficulties and (b) smartphone-based experience technologies assessing daily stressors and emotion experience over a 2-week sampling period. There are three aims: Aim 1 employs a survey-based design to examine longitudinal associations of social isolation with emotion regulation and mood difficulties. Aim 2 utilizes an ecologically valid experience-sampling design to test the bidirectional influence of social stressor dimensions on the variability and level of daily emotion difficulties and mood adjustment over time. Given the strong representation of students from historically marginalized identities (i.e., Latinx/e, Black, and Asian) in this population, Exploratory Aim 3 examines whether the impacts from Aims 1-2 are amplified in marginalized young adults disproportionately impacted by additional systemic and social stressors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.