Understanding individual differences in psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with latent class trajectory analysis

There is increasing evidence that the psychological response to the COVID-19 pandemic are heterogenous. We model classes in a dataset of emotional responses to the pandemic using latent class trajectory analysis on a panel dataset of UK-based participants. Participants (n=868) rated eight emotions on a nine-point Likert scale in April of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, and provided demographic variables, data on perceived social support and the impact of life events. Using a latent class trajectory analysis, we found evidence for six distinct latent trajectory classes: 68.3% of individuals belonged to classes with a pattern of well-coping (decreasing negative emotions and increasing positive emotions) while the remainder showed patterns of poor adjustment. Social support and negative life events were predictive of class membership in a multinomial logistic regression: low social support and experiencing negative life events increased the probability of participants belonging to poorly adjusted classes. Our study suggests that most individuals – over the period of four years - were able to adjust well to the pandemic, while a about one third of individuals struggled considerably. Social support may be of interest as a protective factor and could aid policy makers during future crises.