Impact of Covid 19 Experiences on Emotional Regulation among Adolescents in 6Countries.

workplaces, and places of worship. Meaning-making and religion have emerged as one means for developing coping skills to manage stress (Lorenz et al., 2019). When the ability to use those tools is disrupted, adolescents are likely to revert to maladaptive attempts to cope, which could translate to delinquency (Barendregt et al., 2018). Thus, we care about the specific disruptions to meaning-making resources for young adults, in particular, and the resultant emotional regulation strategies.

In the education sector, school shutdowns resulted in the loss of a full academic year, affecting about 168 million children globally (UNICEF, 2021). The reopening of schools and recovery of the lost academic year came with disrupted wellbeing, increased inequity, and increased dropout rates (UNESCO, 2022). In Kenya, the reopening of schools was accompanied by the introduction of a crash academic programme, suspension of extracurricular activities, and reduced school holidays (Oduor, 2020). During the recovery period, Kenya witnessed heightened delinquency among school adolescents in the form of arson (Wasonga, 2021), indicating a shift in emotional regulation strategies and character strengths of adolescents.

This study hypothesizes that Covid-19 disruptions inversely affected religiosity and character strengths, consequently reducing their buffering effect against stress. This study will examine the mediating role of religiosity and character strengths on emotional regulation among adolescents during the Covid-19 pandemic period in 6 countries (Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Namibia, Philippines, and Australia). The study conceptualizes the main variables shown in Figure 1 as informed by various theoretical literature: Covid-19 experiences (Grasso, Briggs-Gowan, Ford, & Carter, 2020), religiosity and spirituality (Fetzer Institute and National Institute on Aging Working Group, 1999), character strengths based on the 5-C model (Lerner & Lerner, 2013), and emotional regulation (Garnefski, Kraaij, & Spinhoven, 2001).

This study considers that prior to the pandemic, adolescents had a variety of emotional regulation mechanisms to choose from to manage stress, but with the Covid-19 disruptions, coping mechanisms may have been disrupted too. This variation may be mediated by the quality of character strengths and religiosity of the adolescents.