Page 173 - Ana Mlekuž in Igor Ž. Žagar, ur. • Raziskovanje v vzgoji in izobraževanju: Izobraževanje učiteljic in učiteljev za raziskovalno učenje in poučevanje. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut, 2024. Digitalna knjižnica, Dissertationes 48

longitudinal analysis of covid-19 anxiety and mental well-being during lockdown ...
5
4,5
4
3,5
Covid-19 anxiety (M) 2,5 3 2

1,5

0,5 1
0
t1 t2 t3 t4
Time
Low ESE High ESE

Figure 17: The trend lines for COVID-19 anxiety, measured at four time-
points (T1-T4), differentiated in two groups by the 50th percentile (median)
on the emotional self-efficacy scale (ESE).

4 Discussion
We examined positive (mental well-being) and negative (COVID-19 anxi-
ety) aspects of mental health during the first lockdown in a four-wave on-
line study of adult participants in Slovenia. Measurements were taken dur-
ing the first lockdown and the restrictions in Slovenia were relatively stable,
which gave us the opportunity to investigate mental health with more fo-
cus on the individual protective factors. We were interested in whether, and
how, COVID-19 anxiety and mental well-being changed from week to week
during the lockdown, and secondly, whether initial levels and changes over
time were affected by emotional self-efficacy and practicing mindfulness.
It was hypothesised that the immense and sudden challenges at both
individual and societal levels related to the COVID-19 disease and its spread
meant that mental well-being would be its lowest point at the beginning of
the lockdown, and would slowly increase during the lockdown, and simi-
larly, that COVID-19 anxiety would be at its highest point at the beginning
of the lockdown and would slowly decrease in the following weeks of lock-
down. The unconditional LCG model for COVID-19 anxiety showed that
the intercept mean and variance were significant. The former means that
the intercept significantly differed from zero (which in our case does not
have any interpretable implications, given that the response scale ranged
from 1 to 5). Significant intercept variance means that participants differed

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