AUTHOR=Zhang Xiyang , Wang Yu , Lyu Hanjia , Zhang Yipeng , Liu Yubao , Luo Jiebo 

TITLE=The Influence of COVID-19 on the Well-Being of People: Big Data Methods for Capturing the Well-Being of Working Adults and Protective Factors Nationwide

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.681091

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.681091

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=The COVID-19 outbreak has affected people’s lives across the globe. To investigate the mental impact of COVID-19 and to respond to researchers’ call for use of unobtrusive and intensive measurement in capturing time sensitive psychological concepts (e.g., affect), we used big data methods to investigate the impact of COVID-19 by analyzing 348,933 tweets that people posted from April 1st to April 24th, 2020. Our dataset covers 2,231 working adults who are from 454 counties across 48 states in the U.S. In our paper, we theorize the similarity and dissimilarity between COVID-19 and other common stressors. Similar to other stressors, pandemic severity negatively influenced people’s well-being by increasing negative affect. However, we did not find an influence of pandemic severity on people’s positive affect. Dissimilar to other stressors, the protective factors for people during COVID-19 are not common factors that make people resilient to stress and they echo the unique experience during COVID-19. Moreover, we analyzed the text content of 348,933 tweets through LIWC and word cloud analysis to further reveal the psychological impact of COVID-19 and why the protective factors make people resilient to the mental impact of COVID-19. These exploratory analyses revealed the specific emotions that people experienced and the topics that people are concerned of during the pandemic. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.