Wellbeing Dynamics Across Cultures During the Pandemic: A Five-Country Exploration

Abstract

Wellbeing levels have been a global concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is a lack of attention to invariance questions that allow a robust examination of wellbeing dynamics across cultures. Questions of temporal stability that are crucial for examining the impact of the pandemic on wellbeing have received even less attention. Some studies suggested that measures may not be stable after the onset of the pandemic. We examine invariance parameters, the factorial structure and variability of wellbeing variables (life satisfaction, pandemic worries, anxiety and depression screenings) across five different cultural contexts from 2020 to 2022 (N = 4387, total observations = 13,161). A three-factor model separating life satisfaction, worry and distress performed best in terms of model fit and parsimony. We observed scalar invariance across times and identified little variability of wellbeing measures during the pandemic, suggesting that wellbeing levels remained stable during the pandemic in each of the countries sampled. In contrast, we only identified metric invariance across countries at each time point, and found a weakening of correlations between life satisfaction and a depressive/anxious symptoms scale in lower income countries. We discuss implications of our findings for discussions of wellbeing dynamics.